


Fractured

by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf



Category: Primeval
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Instincts, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Creatures, Genetic Engineering, Human Experimentation, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, Insanity, Memory Loss, Mental Instability, Mental Link, Multi, Original Character(s), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 88,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11979150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf/pseuds/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf
Summary: A year ago, Nick Cutter and Connor Temple disappeared without a trace. Under the leadership of Danny Quinn, the others have managed to keep together, until one of them reappears. But more has changed than the team realises, and a new threat is drawing ever closer.





	1. Lost and Found

_Nucleic Exchange Research Development, London Complex_

It was a scene straight out of a nightmare, so horrific and bloody and gruesome that it defied the imagination. Screams and roars ripped through the air. Three dozen hybrids, bloodied and sweaty, stripes gleaming against their exposed flesh, moved in a wild frenzy to avoid the long, lethally sharp blades that played a horrendous game of hide-and-seek with them, flashing out of the steel walls like streaks of deadly silver lightning. Blood sprayed against the walls in a Rorschach of scarlet on the dull grey, dripped off the flashing silver blades, and pooled on the floor beneath the bodies of those with the misfortune of not moving fast enough.

In the viewing area, safe behind a sheet of inch-thick glass, stood two people, calmly and silently watching the slaughter occurring in the death pit. One was a short, thick man with thinning grey hair and thick spectacles perched on a beaky nose; he wore a pristine white labcoat that seemed blindingly bright in the harsh lighting. The woman beside him, however, was tall and lean, shiny dark hair cut short and dark eyes alight. She wore a dark green jumpsuit, torn and well-worn, with a pale scarf tied around her neck, battered knapsack slung over one shoulder. "The others?" asked the woman.

"They'll be ready soon. We're finishing up the final touches," replied the man. With a rendering scream, another hybrid fell beneath the mechanical thrust and parry of the blades; he made notes on the clipboard in his hand. "Once we get the regulator chip implanted and install the neural impulses, they'll be ready for use, Ms. Ambrose."

The woman nodded slowly, a deadly grin coming to her face. It was hardly a smile at all, and the expression sent chills up the man's back. "What about the ones in Manticore?" she asked at last. There was a shriek of pain cut short from the pit, and a scarlet arc of blood splattered across the viewing window; she frowned slightly at the obstruction, now unable to clearly see the action. "How many are left?"

"A dozen out of the original set, ma'am." A small grin tugged at his thin lips. "Some of the others have taken them to calling them the Deadly Dozen," he said. "The small one, Subject..." He shuffled a few papers on his clipboard. "... Echo Thirteen Omega, has particularly excelled. It's become somewhat of a leader amongst the others. Another round or two, and they will be ready as well, right about the same time as the hybrids," he added.

"Excellent work, Dr. Grant." She reached out and pressed a button on the control panel in front of her. The blades in the death pit ceased their deadly movement, and the hybrids collapsed on the floor in sheer exhaustion, panting and sweating, covered in blood. "Stitch them up, get them ready."

"Yes, ma'am."

As she turned to leave, though, an animal roar of fury and pain seemed to shake the very air. There was a shriek of protesting metal, dragging across her ears like nails over a chalkboard. She whirled around just in time to see a metal spear—she recognised it as one of the blades from the pit, ripped from the mechanism, arm and all—shatter the inch-thick glass of the viewing window. The bladed end slammed into Grant's substantial chest, the sound of shattering bone and rendering flesh clearly audible over the sound of shattering glass falling to the ground. The scientist's face took on an expression of near-comical disbelief as he collapsed on the floor, blood spurting from the wound, limbs twitching and jerking spasmodically before going still and dying. One of the hybrids scrambled up through the gaping hole where the window had once been, unheeding of the glass that cut into its exposed flesh, and it slammed one hand on the release. Red lights began to flash warning as a tinny mechanical voice broke out over the loudspeaker: _"Warning. Containment breach. Warning. Containment breach."_

The hybrid looked at her and let out a snarling roar, dripping blood and gore as it leapt towards her. Only her deadly sharp reflexes, honed over years of living a solitary life in hostile environment, saved her; she tore a pistol from the holster on her hip and shot the creature in the head, dropping it to the floor. As the doors of the pit began grinding open, the woman ran. She knew that she didn't have a chance against multiple hybrids, even in their weakened state. Keeping the pistol in hand, she sprinted down the corridors, skidding around corners so fast she nearly collided with other people. "Get security in there _now!"_ she shouted. "Contain them! Do not let them escape!" _God help me if they escape..._

Sounds of gunfire echoed up the hallways, mixing in the sound of earth-shaking animal roars and human screams of agony, the latter cut short with a brutal snarl. The woman, for the first time in a long time, felt a slight curl of fear beneath her breastbone. Perhaps she'd designed her little pets too well... As if to confirm her morbid thoughts, a panicked-looking soldier came limping up to her; his leg was sodden with blood, leaving a trail of scarlet drips and spatters behind him. "Th-they've reached the other containment cells. The rest are loose," he gasped out, trembling as shock overtook him. "They've freed the Dozen." At that, her blood ran cold.

The Deadly Dozen—an apt name, considering that they were twelve of the deadliest creatures in existence. She had designed them with the speed, strength, and agility to take down Future Predators; she had seen it herself, a dozen small, weak-looking human beings in a chamber with two dozen Future Predators. When the slaughter was over, not one of the Dozen had so much as a scratch on them; the Predators had to be cleaned up with a mop. If they'd been freed, without containment, without their programming activated to control them, then the complex was lost. There would be no stopping them.

She bolted. She ran and didn't stop running until she was outside and nearly a kilometre away, lungs burning, heart pounding. Finally, she stood panting at the top of a nearby hill, turning around to look at the complex behind her. Even from here, the screams of the dying could be heard, mingling with the sounds of unbridled animal rage and the odd spurt of gunfire. "Fuck," she whispered under her breath. She rarely cursed like that, but this serious of a situation called for it. The hybrids and the Deadly Dozen were loose on the world. The convergence point wasn't far off either, and from the direction they were going, there was an infinitesimally small chance they would miss it. All those anomalies, there was no telling where or when they'd end up; there was going to be some serious hell to pay.

Reaching in her knapsack, she pulled out a small device, tapped a few commands on the screen, and pressed a button. An anomaly sprang open just a few feet in front of her; shoving the device back into her pocket, she walked through the anomaly. It snapped closed behind her, leaving no trace of Helen Cutter behind.

* * *

  

_Anomaly Research Centre_

Jenny Lewis sat at her desk, idly twirling her pen in one hand as she stared at the stack of paperwork spread out in front of her, just waiting to be done. Lester wanted it done before the end of the day, but she couldn't make herself work on it. Her heart simply wasn't in it. With a low sigh, she turned in her chair to look around her neat, conservative office. Her gaze came to rest on the calendar, and she realised with a jolt that tomorrow would be the one-year anniversary since the disappearance of Professor Nick Cutter and Connor Temple. She leant back a little further in her chair, gripping the pen tightly. She'd tried for a long time not to think about the Scotsman or the affable student, to avoid the pain it caused, but there'd always be one thing, just a small little detail that'd stir up some memory of them, and she would ache all over again.

Deciding to leave the paperwork for now, she stood up and left her office, leaning up against the railing of the ramp, looking down at the central hub. It was quiet, unusually so, but only because the new team leader, former copper DC Danny Quinn, had led them all out on a new anomaly alert. Jenny didn't quite know what to think of Danny yet. He seemed like a nice enough bloke, a good leader. He had a rather...unusual sense of humour, and he did a fair job of keeping the others on their toes. One hell of a reckless streak too, but still responsible. He was also a bit flirty, at least towards her, and she'd been returning his flirtatious advances, despite the little curl of guilt that coiled under her breastbone. Snap out of it, Jenny, she mentally scolded herself. Why the hell should she feel guilty about anything?

You know why, that traitorous little voice whispered back. Yes, she did know why: even though they'd never actually been involved, she had been—and still was—in love with Nick Cutter. And even though it had been a year, she still felt guilty about flirting with Danny, as if she was basely betraying the professor somehow.

As she stood there mulling over her rather maudlin thoughts, the sound of her mobile ringing nearly startled her out of her skin. Shaking her head as if to physically remove thoughts of Cutter, she took out her mobile. It was Stephen's number calling. Odd; he didn't usually call her for anything. Curious now, she flipped open the mobile and held it to her ear. "Hello?"

_"Jenny, it's Stephen—"_

"Yeah, I gathered that," she replied caustically.

 _"Damn it, woman, this is not the time!"_ the lab technician snapped, surprising her.

Jenny straightened up slightly. Stephen usually had a fairly tight hold on his emotions; for him to sound so panicky meant that something serious had to be happening. "What's going on?" she asked, all the sarcasm removed from her voice.

She heard his irritated huff, and in her mind's eye, she could almost see him running a hand back through his hair, pacing with barely controlled energy. _"At the anomaly site,"_ he replied at last. _"I-I don't know where he came from, but... Christ, Jenny, it's Nick. He came through the bloody anomaly."_

The words hit her like a physical blow, and she nearly dropped her mobile out of shock. "What?" she managed to get out, barely able to force the words past her lips. Hope swelled almost painfully in her chest. _Nick. He's back. He's alive,_ her mind said over and over. "Where is he?" she demanded.

_"They've taken him back to the Home Office—"_

"'They'? Who the hell is 'they'?" she demanded even as she strode down the ramp, heading straight for the car park.

 _"Becker and his men. Lester's orders. Jenny, I've got to tell you...I'm not sure it's really him,"_ Stephen admitted.

The shock of the words made her stop dead in her tracks for a moment. "What? Why?"

_"I-I don't know. I can't put my finger on it, but...something's not right."_

Jenny felt the flare of hope in her chest sputter slightly, and she steeled herself, shaking her head. "Look, I'll meet you at the Home Office in a few," she answered, then snapped the mobile closed before he had the chance to answer her.

* * *

  

_Home Office_

Jenny didn't waste any time beating around the bush, no preamble as she strode into the room, marching up to Becker. "Is it him?" she asked shortly.

The captain didn't answer right away, folding both strong arms across his chest. It was clear that he didn't want to outright say 'yes' or 'no' to her, but he was uncomfortable with not responding. A muscle in Jenny's jaw ticked as she clenched her teeth, forcibly restraining her temper. "I don't know," he answered at last.

She forced a deep breath, feeling the slight tremble in her chest. "I want to see him."

"Ms. Lewis, I really don't think—" Becker started to protest.

"I want to see him," she repeated firmly, the tone of her voice leaving no room for argument. She looked over to Danny, Sarah, Abby, and Stephen; the other members of the response team had been standing off in the corner of the room, silently listening and looking increasingly uncomfortable. "You know where he is?" she asked, and Abby nodded, then slipped past Becker, walking down another corridor. Jenny followed after her, vaguely aware of the others trailing behind. "Has he said anything?"

"No," the lizard-girl answered, her voice uncharacteristically subdued. "Lester and Stephen both tried talking to him, but he hasn't said anything yet." It was clear that she was perturbed by the events, but there was still something in her that wanted to believe the man they'd found truly was their leader, the maverick professor. Danny was a good leader, no doubt, but he was no Nick Cutter.

Jenny could tell they were near because there were suddenly a lot more soldiers around, looking tense and wary. Abby led her around a corner to a small viewing area; the two-way mirror looked into an interrogation room. Why there was an interrogation room in the middle of a government facility, she didn't know, but at the moment, she didn't care. Jenny felt her breath rush out in a whoosh as she looked through the two-way glass, her heart lodging in her throat. _Nick…_ she thought.

If it wasn't Nick Cutter, then it had to be his twin brother, but the difference between the man that had disappeared a year ago and the man in the interrogation room was enormous. His hair was longer than she had ever seen, reaching to his shoulders, and most it was matted down and black with dried blood and dirt. He was barefoot, feet cut and bloody; his clothes looked almost like hospital scrubs, seeing as how the fabric was mint-green were it wasn't ripped and stained with filth, blood, and God-knew what else. They looked stolen, too, ill-fitting to his form. His hands were covered in cuts and scrapes, his knuckles raw as if he'd been in a recent fight. Half his face was a dark, swollen bruise, and blood had dried on his skin like streaks of black war paint. Very little of his skin was free of bruises, cuts, scrapes, or blood. And the way he moved…pacing back and forth like a caged animal, wearing a track in the floor. There was a fluid sort of grace to him, just hovering on the line between feline and predatory, a stance that said he was aware of every muscle and joint in his body and possessed total control over each one. Not quite a slink, but something damned close to it.

"He broke one of my men's nose," said Becker stiffly, arms folded tight across his chest. "I don't know if he's the real Cutter or not, but he's not leaving that room."

"I-I'll talk to him," Jenny said softly.

"Jen—" Danny's voice held a note of warning, but she waved a hand to brush him off.

Lester, somehow, had managed to join them without her notice, like some suited wraith. "No, no, Mr. Quinn, let her try. It's quite clear that neither Stephen nor I are going to make any headway with him short of extraordinary measures, which is something I'd rather avoid at all costs," he said with a brief glance towards her. "You couldn't imagine the paperwork involved." The worst part was, she didn't know if he was joking or not; Lester brushed a piece of non-existent lint off his suit sleeve. "Of course, Jenny, you do realise that should things get...eventful, we have no liability in this," he added.

"I'll talk to him," she repeated. She didn't know what she could possibly do to make him talk if the professor wouldn't talk to Stephen and Lester, but she had to try. If he wouldn't talk to her, maybe he would talk to his precious Claudia Brown. She rounded the corner, passed up the several soldiers in the corridor, and pushed open the door. All at once, Cutter went still, his body going marble-still as he stared at her. "Nick," she murmured softly. She took a step towards him, but he leant away from her. It wasn't overly obvious, just a subtle leaning away from her advance, and it was enough to make her stop. There was a tightness to his eyes, a tension to him that hadn't been there before. Still, Jenny felt a tiny, weak smile come to her lips at the sight of him. He didn't smile back, though. His pale blue gaze flicked towards the door behind her, and she could almost hear what he was thinking. "There's a half-dozen soldiers out there with guns, Nick," she said quietly. "Don't."

A muscle in his jaw ticked in frustration, knowing that those odds weren't exactly in his favour.

"Why don't you sit down? Can't imagine walking about so much feels good," she said with a small gesture towards his bare feet; it almost looked as if he'd tried walking across a bed of mud and razorblades. He'd left smudges of blood and dirt on the floor in his pacing. Cutter didn't move, still staring at her with a guarded, blank expression. Had he always been so closed off? "Well, you can pace a track in the floor if you want, I'm sitting down." Jenny walked around the table and sank down into one of the chairs. He resumed his pacing the moment she sat down, and though he wasn't looking directly at her, his attention didn't stray from her for an instant.

Looking at his face, her stomach knotted painfully, taking in the dark purplish bruises, edged in angry red, broken by small cuts. He'd been hit hard enough that the vessels in his left eye burst, turning the white of his eye red. Suddenly remembering how Becker said he'd broken a soldier's nose, she abruptly realised how the soldier must've come by it. "You shouldn't have done that," she admonished in a soft voice. "He was only doing his job."

He only gazed at her sullenly.

"Nick, please. Say something. Anything," she said, and though she meant to demand it of him, it came out more like a plea than anything else. "Just give us something to let us know that it's really you and not—" She caught herself there, barely, unable to even say it aloud: not one of those bloody clones. She didn't even want to consider the idea of him being a clone. Having her hopes brought up only to be torn down by some pale imitation would probably break her all over again, and she'd barely managed to keep together as it was.

He paused in his near-prowl back and forth, eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at her. Jenny swallowed hard, suddenly feeling quite small and fragile under the intensity of his stare. It felt as if he was looking clean through her, straight past the defences she'd built up around herself into the very heart of her. "Not one of them?" he asked quietly. His voice had changed somehow, had gone low and velvety and rich, underlain with the Scottish burr she knew all too well. It didn't even seem human, dragging across her nerves like the whisper of wet silk over stone, and it sent a shiver crawling up her backbone. "You think I'm one of those cheap knockoffs, don't you?" he asked. His lips curled up, but she wouldn't call it a smile. More like a predator's show of teeth before the kill.

Jenny barely managed to repress a shudder, her hands fisting on the material of her skirt, and again she felt far too vulnerable, like a little girl playing grown-up games. "Until you give us proof otherwise, we have to," she replied, proud that her voice didn't shake at all. But then something in her broke, buckling beneath the strain, and she said, unashamedly pleading now, "Nick, please, for God's sake, talk to me. What the hell happened to you? Where have you been? Why didn't you ever come home?" There was another question she wanted to ask, but with the last shreds of her restraint, she managed to bite it back: why didn't you come back to me?

He leant back slightly, the mask slipping for just an instant as a look of surprise crossed his face, but just as quickly, he'd schooled his expression back to a blank wall of indifference. His jaw tightened. "I have to get out of here."

She let out a heavy sigh. "Well, Nick, that's not going to happen until we—"

"No!" he shouted, making her startle at the sudden volume and fury in his voice. "I have to get out of here," he repeated in a low snarl, resuming his pace back and forth across the floor, now more agitated than before. Again, Jenny was struck by how closely he resembled a wild animal forced into a cage too small for it, and again, she felt terribly aware of how small and soft she was. She wasn't a fighter, nowhere near it, and even if she believed with all her heart that Nick Cutter would never raise a hand to a woman, she knew that in a fair fight he could take her apart like a tinker toy.

"Nick—" she tried to say, attempting to soothe the ire she'd somehow managed to stir.

"Get out."

She was so startled by the abrupt demand that she was momentarily speechless. "What?"

He whirled about to face her, and the look in his eyes made her shrink back into the chair, heart stuttering in fear. "If you're not going to help me, then _get out!"_ he shouted, an animalistic snarl rippling beneath his words, a sound that didn't resemble anything remotely human.

Jenny stood up and barely managed to keep from bolting for the door, aware of the man's—she couldn't call him by name—gaze practically burning a hole in her back. But then something in her tugged hard, keeping her from leaving just yet. One hand on the door handle, she half-turned back towards him, somehow managing to find the courage to meet that furious blue glare. "Do you know what happened to Connor?" she asked softly. She couldn't let Abby suffer any more, not knowing what'd become of the affable student, and this man, whoever he was, might just have the answer. "Do you know where he is?"

For a moment, he only stared at her, unblinking. But what he said next made her blood run cold. "Dead, I hope," he answered, voice flat and devoid of all emotion.

Horrified, she yanked the door open and bolted from the room.


	2. Shelter

"He's got away."

Jenny lifted her head from the glass in front of her to look at Captain Becker. He had a scowl set on his features, gun in hand, looking pissed as all hell, but she didn't feel too horribly surprised. "Did he, now?" she asked quietly, her voice shockingly calm.

The tone of her voice—so calm and unsurprised, as if she'd expected it—did nothing but anger Becker further; his scowl deepened. "Yes, he did. The building's on lockdown. Don't ask me how, but the bastard managed to cut his ties, steal a lab tech's ID pass, and slip through the air vents," he replied stiffly, jaw tight.

She only made a soft humming noise of reply, gazing down into the amber liquid in the glass she held like it contained all the secrets of the universe. Spread out in front of her was the report from the lab; one of the medics had taken Cutter's blood when he was detained, and the results were unusual to say the least. His DNA wasn't even human, which ruled out his being the real professor or a clone, and he had some of the strangest markers in his genetics. The medics couldn't make sense of it. It didn't match anything they'd ever seen before. So... _what_ exactly was the man they'd found?

"Stay here, and keep an eye on the others, would you?" Becker snapped, clearly irritated by her lack of response or concern, and he strode away from her office, boots slapping on the concrete. She could hear the sound of his voice barking orders to his men fading off down the corridor.

Once the sound of his voice had completely disappeared, Jenny got to her feet and walked out her office. Soldiers were hurrying about like mad; she could see Lester in his office on the phone with someone. From the expression on his face, it wasn't exactly a pleasant conversation being held. Still, oddly enough, she didn't feel alarmed. She felt...numb. Detached from reality in a way. She could see that the rest of the team had gathered around the ADD, and she made her way down the ramp to join them. Danny and Stephen both looked edgy, a bit twitchy; no doubt Becker had forbade them from joining in the hunt. Sarah looked nervous, and Abby appeared uncertain. "How could he have cut his ties?" Danny muttered under his breath. "He was searched when he was brought in, and he didn't have a thing on him. Those clothes he had on didn't even have pockets."

"Did anybody get hurt?" Abby demanded. There was a slightly challenging edge to her voice, like she didn't believe that it was even possible, but there was also a flicker of fear in her gaze, as if she feared it could be true. She was still shaken by the professor's words concerning Connor— _Dead, I hope_ —and it showed in her eyes.

Stephen shook his head without looking at her, absorbed in thought. "No. He scared the hell out of a few lab techs, but that's it," he replied, then let out an irritated huff. "They should let us help," he growled, folding his arms across his chest.

Jenny gave a small shrug. "Stephen, this building is full of highly-trained Special Forces soldiers, okay? If anyone can find him, they will," she replied.

His blue gaze whipped around to her. "'If.' You said 'if,' not 'when.' You don't think that they're going to find him, do you?" Stephen asked quietly. When she didn't answer, he shook his head. "Jenny, look, Cutter's good, but he—he's not _that_ good. They're going to find him."

She only shrugged again. She wouldn't say that she didn't believe that the SF's would find him; after what she'd seen in that interrogation room, she didn't know what had happened to Nick Cutter, but she knew for damn sure that he wasn't the man she thought she knew.

"They _will_ find him," Stephen reiterated.

* * *

They didn't find him.

The soldiers combed the building top to bottom four times and found nothing but the ties he'd cut and the ID badge he'd nicked off one of the lab techs. Jenny knew he wouldn't be coming back to the ARC, then, otherwise he'd have kept the pass, just in case he needed to get inside again. Becker practically had steam coming out his ears by the end of the night, and Lester looked ready to kill someone. Stephen, for his part, tried to help, giving Becker the names of places the professor favoured so the soldiers could have some place to start looking. Lester wanted him found sooner rather than later, but Cutter was one person in the largest city in the UK.

Jenny lay curled on her bed, the rain beating a soft pattering rhythm on the roof and windows. She'd been lying there for hours, trying to sleep but unable to manage it. Her mind was consumed with thoughts of Cutter. Where in the hell could he have gone? He had looked as if he'd been put in a tumble dryer with a bucketful of dirt, blood, and razorblades. There were only so many places he could go, and even fewer places he wouldn't attract attention in. He couldn't go home—all his stuff had been packed up in a storage unit, and the house was rented out. Part of her wondered if perhaps he hadn't taken after Helen and had started epoch-hopping through the anomalies.

She was in that strange not-quite-awake but not-quite-asleep fuzzy place when someone knocked on the front door sharply. For a moment, she lay there with eyes half-open, feeling like her head was padded with cotton gauze, trying to determine whether or not she'd heard it or dreamt it. It came again: sharp, loud, insistent knocking. She groaned and closed her eyes with a groan. "Alright!" she shouted groggily. "I'm coming!" Some minutes later, she shuffled down the steps to the door; if they wanted speed, then maybe whoever it was should've thought about knocking at an hour somewhat closer to sunrise, for God's sake.

Trying to scrub the sleep-grit out of her eyes with one hand, she made her way to the door, grumbling angrily, "Whatever the hell it is, couldn't it have waited until morning you—" She yanked the door open and the words died in her throat, chest tightening. "You."

Standing on her step in the rain, covered in filth, sodden in rain, and looking like a bloody train wreck on two feet, was Nick Cutter. The bruises on his face were even worse now, a hideous mask of discoloured flesh that covered the entire left side of his face. His hair was matted down so thickly with a mix of dirt and blood she could hardly see any blond. There was an ancient-looking, well-battered knapsack slung over one shoulder; he was still barefoot, too, and was wearing those mangled, stolen scrubs. He stifled a cough in his sleeve. "Hullo, Miss Lewis," he said quietly.

She reached out to grasp the doorframe for support, trying to keep her breathing steady. "Why are you here?" she asked.

"Well, my house is currently being rented out by a very nice couple from Cork, so…." He shifted his weight slightly, looking…uncomfortable and uneasy, as if he was half-expecting her to shove him back out into the rain. He coughed into his sleeve again; it would be a miracle if he made it through this without coming down with something.

Jenny stepped backwards and pushed the door open wider. "In," she whispered raggedly; Cutter gave a small nod and edged past her into the foyer. "You can…put your stuff down on the couch, and there—there's a shower upstairs," she told him. He gave a weak smile, looking almost pathetically relieved. A part of her ached, wondering what kind of hell he must've been through that he looked that happy at the prospect of a hot shower.

He kept the knapsack on his shoulder as he started up the stairs, but then he paused on the steps. "Jenny," he said, turning to look at her. "Thank you. I mean that."

She didn't answer, just looked up at him and nodded. He continued up the stairs; she heard the sound of him moving about for a moment, then she heard the shower turn on. Jenny let out a long sigh, slumping back against the wall. She knew that, logically, she ought to call Lester, call someone to come and get him, but still, illogically, she wasn't. She headed to the kitchen, looking beneath the sink for the first-aid kit she kept stocked there. When she had still been engaged, Mark had thought she was going crackers when she put together the kit, but of course, he hadn't known she had just come home from an anomaly alert involving a flock of small, vicious little pyroraptors that had small-but-sharp claws and plenty of needle teeth.

Sitting on the couch in her plaid flannel pyjamas, Jenny laid out the kit on her coffee table in a mechanical manner, barely aware of what she was doing, and waited for him. It was nearly a half-hour before the sound of running water cut off. Cutter came down the stairs a few moments later. He'd changed into his own clothes, jeans and a black t-shirt; no doubt that was what he had in the knapsack.

Jenny winced. Now that he was clean of the layer of dirt and grime, she could better see the extent of his injuries, all the scrapes and bruises and cuts that covered about every inch of exposed skin. "Come sit down," she invited quietly, patting the empty space beside her. Cutter hesitated, eyes narrowed slightly, and her chest ached at how wary he was, so cautious and tense. "Nick, I'm not going to hurt you. Please, I want to help you. That looks pretty rough," she said, gesturing towards her forehead where there was a long cut across his own face, just near his hairline.

He was still strung tight as a piano wire, slowly edging around the couch. She was inwardly amazed at the grace with which he moved, like a great hunting cat; his muscles were tensed beneath the fabric of his shirt, tension humming in his shoulders as he sank down to sit on the very edge of the couch. Jenny picked up a square of gauze soaked in antiseptic and reached for him; he jerked his head back, shying away from her hand. "Nick," she scolded in a gentle voice. "Let me. Please." She lifted a hand to gently grasp his chin, and this time, he winced at the sting of the antiseptic but didn't pull back again.

Jenny slowly wiped the dried blood off the gash across his forehead, being exceedingly gentle. "Nick," she murmured quietly, "why did you run?"

"I couldn't stay," he replied in just as soft a tone; his voice made her shiver slightly, dragging across her nerves like a tangible thing, velvet rubbed the wrong way over her skin. "I had to—to get out. I couldn't be stuck in there." A shiver went through his body like a flick through a rope. "I couldn't be…trapped."

She set down the bloodied gauze and picked up the bandages. Holding his hair back with one hand, she used her free hand to place butterfly bandages on the cut. "What do you mean?" she asked.

He exhaled slowly, eyes closing, and she felt the slightest tilt of his head against her palm. After a long pause, dark gold lashes parted and his pale blue gaze moved back to her face. His stare was less intense than it had been in the Home Office, but it was no less searching, feeling as if he was looking through her into her very core. "I don't…have the words to explain this to you, Jenny. I don't know how. But…when I was gone, where I was kept…I can't ever feel that way again."

Jenny stared at him. "Feel what way?" she asked, unable to raise her voice above a murmur.

His eyes closed tightly, jaw clenched. "Trapped. Helpless."

She lowered her hands to her lap, simply looking, taking in the familiar sight of him, one she'd thought had been lost. Now that his head-to-toe layer of blood and grime had been scrubbed off, the more subtle changes in him were now noticeable. Even before his disappearance, he had been in good shape for an academic of his age, but now he was seemed made of nothing but muscle, the black fabric of his t-shirt drawn tight across his chest and shoulders. Beneath the discolouration of bruises, she could see old scars and burns marring his skin, track marks on the inner crease of his elbow. There was a broken, haunted look in his eyes, one she didn't want to see. And what she had mistaken for blood and grime at first were actually black streaks in his hair, entirely incongruous to the rest of the pale gold, as if someone had dripped ink through his hair.

"What about Connor?" she asked softly, and his head snapped towards her so quickly she thought he might give himself whiplash. He didn't speak, only stared at her. Jenny bit her lip, twisting her fingers around the hem of her blouse. "You…you said that you hoped…." She couldn't even bring herself to say it aloud.

The professor lowered his gaze to the pillow he had in his lap, idly tracing patterns on the fabric with his fingertips. "You saw my bloodwork, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yes, but—"

"You know that I'm…different now?" he overrode her.

She hesitated. "Yes…"

"Think about what must have been done to me in order to change me like that, on that deep of a level, Jenny," Cutter prompted, his voice gone low and velvety-soft once more, though now it sent chills up her backbone. "Think about the kind of pain that would come with procedures like that. Imagine being conscious for that, feeling yourself being unmade. Having someone take your body, your brain and play; twist you and warp you until you cannot think beyond the unending pain. Yank you out and shove something else inside, remake you into something _else_ , something inhuman." His gaze lifted to hers, and that terrible, broken, haunted look was back in his eyes. One hand went out, fingertips just resting against her wrist. "I promise you, Jenny, whatever you imagine cannot compare to the reality. When I said that I hoped Connor was dead, it was because I would rather have him dead than have him suffer through that kind of torment. Someone as kind and gentle as Connor Temple…should never have to feel like that. I don't know if he's alive or not, but I hope to God he didn't have to suffer through that."

She felt her heart wrench in her chest, so painfully that tears welled in her eyes, and she had to put a hand over her mouth to hold in a sob. _Oh, God, Nick…what happened to you?_ she thought. Her other hand reached for him, and he shied back from her touch as if she had extended a knife instead of her hand. Jenny felt something in her break and come loose, and she practically sprung at him, flinging her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. For a terrible moment, he was still and tense in her grasp, and she feared that she might've done something wrong…but then his arms came around her, strong as steel bands, clutching her to his chest. Cutter buried his face in the crook of her shoulder like he had something to hide from; she could feel him trembling ever-so-slightly against him.

It should've been awkward, the way they were holding each other, so closely and intimately, but it somehow wasn't. It felt warm and secure and natural. Jenny turned her face into the slightly damp gold-and-black hair that lay near to his shoulders, breathing in the musky, spicy-sweet scent of him. "I'm sorry, Nick. I'm so, so sorry," she whispered into his ear.

A halfhearted growl slipped from his lips, vibrating in his chest. "What makes you think I want your pity?" he asked.

"Because nobody else has given it to you," she replied softly. He didn't answer, but she felt him shudder and burrow closer into her, and that was answer enough for her. When they finally managed to pull away from each other, Jenny lifted one hand and brushed back a stray lock of his hair, tucking it back behind his ear, and this time he didn't shy away from her touch. Eyes still closed, he tilted his head against her hand. "You look exhausted," she said quietly. It was the truth. There were shadows under his eyes that weren't from bruising, and she could feel the slightest trembles running through his frame. "Get some sleep, Nick. Goodnight."

"Goodnight," he replied softly.

As she stood up, on impulse, she leant forward and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. Jenny started back up the stairs but paused at the bottom step, one hand on the railing. "Nick?" she called; his head turned towards her. "Be here in the morning."

He gave a small nod.

* * *

And true to his word, he was there in the morning when she came back downstairs, following the smell of fresh coffee into the kitchen. Cutter stood near the sink, leaning back against the counter's edge; rays of early sunlight slanted through the kitchen window and turned his hair into a halo of pale gold, barred with incongruous black streaks. "Morning," she greeted, unsure of what else to say.

"Morning," he answered.

Jenny fixed a cup of coffee in silence, aware of his eyes following her. "Your face looks better," she noted with a glance towards him; some of the swelling had gone down so he no longer resembled a lumpy plum pudding. They were silent for a few moments, but then she took a deep breath and turned to face him. "Nick…you have to go back to the ARC."

He let out a low sound that sounded for all the world like a growl, a frown pulling at his features. "No."

"Nick," she said firmly. "You have to. You've been missing for a year. There are things that have to be done. Lester wants—"

"I don't give a damn what Lester wants!" he snarled, slamming a fist against the countertop so hard that the dishes rattled, making her jump and gasp in surprise. A low growl rattled in the depths of his chest, a sound unlike any human being could make, and again Jenny found herself wondering just what in the hell had happened to make him like this. Cutter visibly reined in his temper, the growl fading off, and he raised his eyes to hers. "I-I can't. Not now."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he waved a hand and cut her off. "I'm not saying that I won't, Jenny, but…I can't do it just yet," he murmured. Sighing, he reached out towards her, and his strong, callused fingers wrapped around her wrist, drawing her closer. Tingling warmth spread up her arm from the contact of his hand, and she felt him gently stroking the tender skin of her inner wrist with his fingertips. "Give me a day or two. That's all I ask. Just…give me some time to get things sorted. Okay?" he asked.

Jenny bit her lip, torn between wanting to help him and feeling the need to tell the others the truth. Finally, she heaved a sigh. "I have a feeling I'm going to regret this, but okay," she relented.

He smiled at her for the first time since his return, and for a moment, her heart faltered. She'd almost forgotten how warm that smile made her feel. "Thank you, Jenny." To her shock, he lifted her arm and pressed his lips to her palm before releasing her wrist.

Before she could think of anything else to say, her mobile let out its annoying chirping noise. Muttering out an irritated curse, she picked up the irritating device and flicked it open, holding it to her ear. "Hello?"

" _Morning, Jen,"_ came the enthusiastic voice of Danny Quinn. _"Hate to call so early, but Lester's given an all-hands-on-deck order, and it's my job to summon the ranks. Becker's already picked up Sarah, and Abby's on her way."_

She let out a quiet sigh. "Yeah, alright. I'll be there in a few. Have you called Stephen yet?"

" _He's next on the list after you,"_ Danny replied. _"See you in a few, Jen."_

"Mm-hm." Jenny hung up and shoved the mobile back into her bag.

"'Jen'?" came Cutter's rather disdainful echo of Danny's words, arms folded across his chest, and she twisted around to stare at him. He'd heard that…from across the kitchen? Ten feet away from her? "He calls you 'Jen'?" The contempt in his voice was obvious.

"Yeah, sometimes," she replied. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing, just…" He gave a snort and shook his head. "Nothing. Go to the ARC. I'll be here when you get home."

"You'd better be," she replied, and a short, sharp growl slipped past his lips. Her stomach clenched in fear as she hurriedly grabbed her bag and jacket, fleeing for the door. She could still feel his gaze boring into her back through the window.

* * *

Cutter watched through the front window as Jenny's car pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down the street. Only once her car was out of sight did he move again. Pushing away from the counter, he shivered, the slight tremor running down his body from head to toe like a flick through a rope. He went into the spare room where he'd spent the night, reached into his knapsack, and pulled out a small throwaway mobile; flicking it open, he dialed a number he knew by heart.

It rang only once. _"Well?"_

"She's gone. I'll be there in twenty. Make sure the others are there when I arrive," he said.

_"Of course. Are you certain this is going to work?"_

The doubtful note had his hackles raising, and he clenched his fists tight, nails cutting into his palm hard enough to draw blood, focusing on the pain to help keep an even keel. "Make sure the others are there," he repeated, a growl layering his words.

 _"I will,"_ came the soft reply, slight fear in the two words. Good.

Cutter snapped the mobile closed, shoved it in his back pocket, and left the house.


	3. The Cat's Cradle and the Mouse's Tunnels

When she arrived at the ARC, the rest of the team had already arrived, including a rather miserable-looking Abby and an irritated Becker. Jenny knew that the captain was still pissed because Cutter had gotten away, but Abby was despondent because the professor hadn't gotten them any closer to finding her flatmate and had left them only with his rather sepulchral wish that the young man was dead. Jenny wished that she could provide some kind of comfort, but she forcibly held her tongue.

"So, any sign of him?" asked Stephen, arms folded over his chest. There was no doubt in any of their minds who he was referring to.

"No," replied Becker through his teeth; it still tore at him, knowing that a prisoner had escaped on his watch.

The tracker shook his head slowly, still struggling internally. He had known Cutter for a long time, and escaping a building full of highly-trained Special Forces soldiers was far beyond any skills that the former professor possessed. He had looked at the room where Cutter had been kept; the air vents he'd crawled out of was barely big enough for Abby to fit through. How the man had managed to worm his way through there was beyond him. And there was still the mystery of how he'd managed to cut his ties when he hadn't anything sharp on him.

Jenny had forcibly had to keep her silence. She hadn't even thought to ask Cutter how he'd escaped, but she could already feel the guilt curling in her stomach, even though she hadn't actually lied, just avoided telling the truth.

The ADD began going off, alarm blaring and red lights flashing; as a tech ran over to silence the machine and pull up the address, Danny turned towards the rest of the team. "Look, let's forget about him for the time being, yeah? We've got a job to do here," he reminded them. There was a ripple of murmured consensus. The tech turned and gave the copper the location of the anomaly, and they headed for their separate vehicles.

* * *

Cutter was starting to believe that he had made the wrong choice, coming to Jenny's place. The delicate scent of her permeated the air, soaked every bit of cloth and furniture in the house. Whilst it soothed something inside him he hadn't even known was aching, it also stirred instincts that he would rather stay dormant. When he took a shower, he had to walk past Jenny's bedroom to get to the bathroom; he felt this urge to crawl into the bed and wrap himself up in the sheets, just be surrounded by the warm, familiar scent of her.

Shaking his head, he tried to dislodge those thoughts. He couldn't think about that right now; there were more important things for him to focus on at the moment. Once he was sure that Jenny wasn't going to be coming back, he slipped out the back door, making sure that it was locked behind him. He pulled the spare key out of the false rock in the flowerbed—the smell of plastic was a dead giveaway—and slipped it in his back pocket.

When he strode into the warehouse where he had left the others, there was a low chorus of soft hissing and growling that greeted him. Most looked rough and battered, still in the ragged, bloodstained clothes stolen from the Complex, though a few appeared to have gotten hold of some better clothing, from where he didn't know. He heard the rustling whisper of fabric as they shifted their weight, eyes shining in the dim light.

"'Bout time you got here. Have fun shagging your girlfriend?" hissed a low, sinfully rich voice; a tall, slender form melted out of the shadows. She looked like any man's fantasy, long-limbed and curvaceous, with creamy pale skin, vivid green eyes, and thick red corkscrew curls down to her waist…until he took into account the bloodstains over her clothes, the shiny welts of scar tissue across her skin, the wild, feral look in her eyes.

"I didn't _shag_ her, and she is not my girlfriend," he spat back, anger flaring up inside him hot and potent; only through sheer force of will did he manage to shove it back down again. He raked his gaze around the warehouse, eyes narrowing. "Where are the rest?" he rumbled, turning back to glare at Merinus.

She shrugged. "I don't know," she replied icily.

His hands curled into fists, digging his nails into his palms hard enough to draw blood once more, his mind focusing on the sharp pain it caused to keep from springing at her. Even so, he strode a few steps towards her. Raw fury clawed at his insides, his mouth tasted like burning metal, and a low growl roiled in his chest, rasping up his throat. "Where the hell did they go?" he demanded through gritted teeth.

Merinus straightened her back, narrowing her bottle-green eyes at him. "How should I know? I'm not a bloody babysitter."

"Goddamn it, Merinus!" he barked sharply, forcing himself to turn away from her. There was a ripple of movement within the ranks of hybrids, the low rasp of hissing and soft growling echoing in the otherwise silent air of the warehouse; they were feeding off the conflict, taking it all in. "I told you before I left that you had to stay together. It's not safe for any of us yet, not until I get things sorted out." Unable to help himself, a snarl tore up his throat, louder than before. She hissed back, hands curving into claws as she prowled closer to him, and he bristled in fury, inner beast clawing at him to fight back, respond to the challenge. His back straightened, eyes narrowing, and his blood heated, running faster as he readied for a fight. "Don't push me, girl," he cautioned.

Merinus's jaw flexed as she edged backwards; his voice sounded demented, words layered by animalistic snarling. She backed away from him, hands relaxing. Her eyes lowered to the floor. It was the first smart thing she'd done. He had not become the leader of these hybrids for nothing; he'd won every scrap of respect from these creatures through blood and pain, piece by piece. If he really wanted to, killing her would be terrifyingly easy for him, especially now.

All heads snapped towards the sound of hurried footsteps, growling and huffing; a side door of the warehouse crashed open with a _bang,_ several others tripping their way inside. Cutter strode towards them. "What part of 'stay in here' did you sorry sods fail to comprehend?" he demanded in rage, barely managing to keep his temper under control as they cringed beneath his glare. His eyes raked over each one of them—troublemakers and firebrands, the lot, except…. "And you?" he demanded.

"I-I went to get them," mumbled the hybrid. She was a young little thing, only seventeen, with hair the dark gold colour of ripe hay marred with small, chunky splashes of black. Shy grey eyes peeked up at him through light brown lashes, unable to look at him for more than a few seconds at a time. "I th-thought you'd want—"

He waved a hand. "It's alright, Schulyer. You brought them back," he answered, and she bit her lip, ducking her head to hide a pleased smile. Looking back at the others, his scowl returned. "You gits shouldn't have been so goddamn reckless. I told you. It is not safe for any of us right now, not until we know who is and is not against us. Unless you'd like to end up back in that hellhole of a Complex, I suggest you start doing what I tell you," he snarled. "Got it?"

They shuffled and nodded, mumbling assent, none of them quite able to look at him either. He growled another low note, a noise that sounded like the deep grinding of boulders being forcibly grated together. It couldn't be made by any human being…but lucky for him, he wasn't human. They all shivered, ducking beneath the force of the sound. "Schulyer, you and Dax take the perimetre. Kina, you take Auggie, Nicola, and Jamison. There's a marketplace at 28th and Wellsburg. Go there, get enough food for the lot. Hy, Loren, Kellen, Constance, and Nara, you find some clothes without blood on them, yeah?" he ordered sharply. If he was going to have any hope of containing this lot, it had to be done with a firm hand, but he couldn't just leave them in a dark, musty warehouse. They'd been through enough hell. He'd have to give them something if he expected them to stay in one place.

After all, wild animals weren't meant to be forced into cages.

* * *

Nothing.

In the beginning there had been…nothing. No sight, no sound, touch, taste, or smell. Just nothing at all. Absolute darkness. It hadn't been cold or hot or even warm. It had only just been the nothingness, this obscure nihility that consumed everything. He had not been able to remember anything else, nothing but a blank, dark void in what he'd assumed was supposed to be his memories. No sight, no taste, no sound, no smell, no touch.

And then there had been pain. So much pain. Fiery, torturous, encompassing, all-consuming agony that swallowed up every cell and molecule and fibre within him. He'd been in pieces then, just a handful of stray parts flung about everywhere like a glass goblet dashed against the wall, shattered into fragments. He had thought that perhaps he would die then, that the fire would consume everything within him and he would be burnt away into smoke and ashes. But he had not.

The spider had been there, the spider of doors with her web cast wide, piecing him together bit by bit. She had not done it herself, no. She had other creatures snared in her web, some lured with the promise of honey, others brought by their own avarice, all of them turned to puppets what danced as she pulled the strings. They were the ones that'd put him together. They'd shoved in new pieces as well, ones that hadn't fit, that weren't his own, and ripped down the walls of his mind to open him up. Bit by bit he had come together beneath the cold blue hands of the faceless ones that danced on the spider's strings.

The spider had wanted serpents to strike with speed and venom, which is why the puppets had begun putting him together at all. It was not just him, either. There were eleven others like him, all of them bound, one to the other, in silver cord so the serpents all danced to the same tune. She had tied them all up in sticky threads to take their will, and when she pulled on the web, they danced as she bid, twelve obedient little marionettes all covered in blood.

He was incomplete, though. He still was. He knew it. The hybrids, the animals caught inside the skins of humans, had broken their chains, severed the sticky threads of the web and tore themselves free. In the roiling sea of blood and pain the hybrids caused amidst the puppets, the chains had been struck off him as well, before they could put together the rest of his pieces. But he knew that it was good. If the spider's puppets had finished, then he would not be the same. He would only move as she bid him, never of his own will. But when the animals cut the strings, he had gotten his chance to tear free of the web. And he had. Him, and all eleven of his brothers and sisters. There had been more, once, much more, but they had all been unmade and thrown away, broken little toys cast aside. But they had survived, and their silver cord kept them from being alone. The hybrids had gone, the pride disappearing through the gateways.

He and the others had gone through the shimmering doorways as well, stepping from world to world until arriving at one he knew was right. He did not know how he knew it, only that this was where he was supposed to be. And the others followed him. He was not their leader in the way that he was faster or stronger or better than them. No. They were equals, all with their own strengths and their own soft spots. But he could fight the spider's workings better than the others could. He could strain against the web until its threads snapped whilst they could not. That was his strength. That was what made him leader. When the spider's venom oozed through their minds like sticky black tar, swallowing up their thoughts, he was the one that could pull himself free and drag the others to the safety of their delicate sanity.

"Echo."

His head came up, drawing him out of his own remembering. "Yes?" he asked.

"We are hungry." Foxtrot One Kappa was small and slight, with dark hair and even darker eyes, her skin pale from lack of sun for many months, trapped within the Complex.

He knew it—he could feel the ghostly echo of hunger in his own stomach, reminding him that the last meal he had seen had been the Complex's strange-tasting meals, some three days before. As he stood, the others around him rose. They had taken shelter in the intricate system of tunnels that lay beneath the surface of the city, empty veins that once held its life but now held only dust and water. It was safe down here, where there were no other people and therefore no chance that any of the spider's puppets could catch them. It was cold, he supposed, but he was designed not to feel the cold, and his clothes protected him from the chill. "There are many places where the tunnels open," he said, pitching his voice just so there was no answering echo from the tunnel. "We will find food that way. Do not speak to any others, and take care that none follow you. The spider waits," he reminded them quietly.

A shiver went through them all, rippling along the silver cord, and he felt the chill crawl up his backbone like icy little worms. No matter what would become of them, they would never be marionettes dancing upon the spider's threads again. The prospect of being ensnared in the web once more was deadly in and of itself.

"Two by two. One to watch for the cat whilst the mouse steals the crumbs," Echo decided.

They broke apart into pairs, little mice scurrying away through their tunnels. He walked beside another, Quebec Sixteen Rho, their footsteps making no noise. Like ghosts, they were, all pale-faced and silent, cloaked in shadow black. "Why?" she asked softly. "Why do we linger here? Not wise, staying in places, even as little mice in holes. Spiders lurk in holes as well as mice."

"I know," he answered in just as quiet a voice. "But lurking needs doing. You will see. We are needed here."

"How?"

He didn't know. It was only a feeling he had, an inherent knowledge within him that said he needed to stay. Like iron drawn to a magnet, he felt something within him pulling to remain here. A small trickle of memory threaded in the back of his mind, always beyond reach, slipping through his fingers like smoke whenever he tried grasping it. It was a bit of memory from Before. Before was an uncertain thing, without parametres or specifications or details, just an object lurking beyond tangibility. It was only Before, a forgotten time when he was once whole without the help of puppets and spider thread, the time that came Before the nothingness and the all-consuming fire. Echo could not focus on the Before, though. He had far too much to worry about, here, during Now, but that one little wriggle of Before was still there, just lurking and waiting. It was what told him that he was needed here, that urged him to stay and to keep the others close by. It was important. He was needed. They were all needed.

"I do not know," he answered at last. Glancing back down at Quebec, he reiterated, "Lurking needs doing. We are needed. I do not know how just yet, but the mongoose does not know it is needed until the cobra slithers in. We will wait. Our purpose will reveal itself."

She was quiet for a long time, but he could feel her thoughts roiling about inside her, all red-black and vinegar. They had reached the end of their tunnel, faced with a rusted metal door that was crooked upon its hinges. As Echo reached for the handle, she grasped his wrist. "What of the spider? She will not let her pets escape, serpent or feline. The Complex was only a single corner of her web. She weaves another."

He lowered his eyes to her once more. "The spider will die," he answered solemnly.


	4. Nightmares and Scars

_The heat was unbelievable, pressing against his skin like a living thing. Cutter coughed hard, the smoke-clogged air tickling at his throat, and he hastily covered his mouth and nose with one sleeve. With one hand, he pushed aside a piece of debris blocking his way, climbing over the wreckage and making his way into his office. The time map was in ruins, months of careful work reduced to a twisted mass of metallic rods. Helen lay on the floor, facedown and unconscious, the artefact lying near one hand. He didn't have the foggiest idea what it did, but he knew it had to be important if she wanted it so badly. Picking it up, he quickly wrapped it in his jacket and tucked it away inside a fallen piece of piping, then leant down to shake her shoulder. "Helen," he said in an urgent tone. The heat was growing with each second, and there was a creaking-groaning noise that he didn't like coming from the ceiling._

_She coughed and shifted, lifting her head to look at him. Through the mask of grime and soot on her face, he could see the expression of surprise. "You came back for me?"_

_Well, she didn't have to sound quite so stunned. Even if she had gone unbalanced, he wouldn't just leave her to die. "Yeah," he answered._

_Her lips curled up in a sardonic smile. "You always were sentimental."_

_In that instant, he knew that Jenny was right: this woman wouldn't have lifted a finger to save him if their roles had been reversed. Hell, she was bloody mocking him for coming back, and he was saving her life. Feeling something inside his chest harden, he lowered his hand to his side and straightened up, heading back towards the exit. Right now, he didn't much care if she followed him or not. "Where's the artefact?" she demanded._

_"I dunno, it'll be wherever you left it," he shot back, stifling another cough in his sleeve._

_Helen pressed, "What did it do, Nick?"_

_Turning back to face her, he allowed a small smile to come to his own lips. "I haven't the faintest idea. Now are you coming or not?" he asked, then ducked out of the ruined office and picked his way back down the corridor towards the exit. The flames that danced about everywhere seemed to give the smoke-filmy air a hellish red glow._

_"I'm sorry, Nick, I can't let you go," came Helen's voice down the corridor._

_Did this woman not grasp the urgency of the situation? Surely this conversation could be held when they weren't standing in a burning building that sounded ready to cave in any second. "Oh, what the hell are you talking about now?" he asked, whirling around to face her, then froze at the sight of her, holding a gun pointed directly at his chest. With a low, exasperated sigh, he turned around. "Oh, for God's sake," he grumbled softly, then turned to face her once again. "You really know how to pick your moments, don't you?" he asked, shaking his head. This was un-bloody-believable._

_"If you'd seen the things that I have, Nick, you'd understand why I have to do this," she insisted, a slightly demented look in her eyes. "I'll make you understand. You'll see."_

_"You know what, Helen?" Cutter said as he stared at the woman that had been his wife. He had once loved her, had once thought that she was the person he could spend his life with; now he was seeing who she really was. She was off the deep end entirely. Madness flickered in the depths of her eyes even as they filled with tears, and the hand holding the gun was trembling. "You're not as smart as I thought you were."_

_The muscle in her jaw ticked, and he could see her finger tighten on the trigger. He waited for the pain of being shot, knowing there wasn't going to be any escaping this one. But it didn't matter. He knew that Connor would be able to solve the artefact without him. He knew the team would be able to survive. Three things happened extremely fast right then: there was a tremendous crash, something came barreling out of the wreckage and tackled Helen, and the gun went off. Instead of hitting him in the chest like she'd intended, the bullet hit his shoulder…except that it wasn't a bullet at all. A tranquiliser dart was buried deep in the flesh of his shoulder, and already he was feeling dizzy. Staggering back a step, he tripped over thin air and fell back on his arse, vision swimming before his eyes._

_The sound of Helen swearing made his gaze lift, barely able to focus anymore. The thing that had come out of the wreckage and tackled Helen wasn't a thing at all. Connor Temple was struggling to wrestle the gun out of her grip, covered in soot and ash, a look of fury on his face. Suddenly she brought her knee upwards into his stomach, barely missing his groin. Connor doubled over with a strangled wheeze, but then Helen cried out in sudden pain, releasing the gun as if it'd burnt her. There was a double-crescent bite mark on her wrist. She brought her other arm up, her elbow colliding with the student's nose. Connor's head snapped back and he staggered a step backwards, blood running from his nose. Quick as a flash, she'd pulled another tranquiliser dart from her pocket and stabbed it into the young man's arm; Connor swayed on his feet then sat down heavily, succumbing to the fast-acting drug. Cutter slumped to the floor, unable to move anymore, a grey haze clouding the edges of his vision. The last thing he saw before passing out entirely was Helen holding a strange little device in one hand, and an anomaly opened just behind her, the firelight making it seemed to shine hellish crimson._

* * *

Cutter sat up in bed with a short snarl escaping his throat. Every muscle was strung tight, heart racing, adrenalin pouring through him like liquid heat, all senses expanded in search of any threat. Until he remembered that there was no threat. He wasn't in the Complex anymore—he was in London, in the spare room of Jenny's house. Taking a deep breath to try and steady his nerves, he rested his elbows against his knees and pushed both hands back through his hair. He hadn't dreamt about his kidnapping for a long time; hell, he'd near forgotten it. Until now, that is. He could still smell smoke and taste the ash on his tongue. Absently, he lifted a hand to one shoulder, massaging the spot where the tranquiliser dart had been stuck in his flesh as if the dream had caused the old wound to ache.

_I'll make you understand,_ she had said to him in the burning ARC a year ago. Yeah…he understood that she was off her bloody rocker, that's what she'd made him understand.

When he woke up after the tranquilising, he'd been strapped to a table with white-clad scientists all around him, and they'd started the first of his genetic treatments that had eventually turned him into the creature he was today. He didn't know what she'd done with Connor, but he honestly did pray that the young man had died instead of having to endure that kind of torture. He knew that the rest of the team probably thought him cold-hearted and a right bastard, but they didn't know. None of them _knew._ He pushed his hands back through his hair once more, sighing quietly.

He flopped back on the bed, putting one arm over his eyes, and tried to go to sleep once more, though he doubted that he'd be getting any more rest tonight. For a moment, just a fleeting second, he missed the Complex—they would feed him and all other hybrids tranquilisers in their food to make them sleep. He wished that he could take normal sleeping pills, but his body wasn't as susceptible to such things anymore. The tranqs fed to the hybrids were specially made to put them to rest. Cutter turned over and buried his head in the pillows.

* * *

It'd been almost a week since Cutter's mysterious return, and Jenny had yet to manage to talk him into returning to the ARC. It was one thing that he absolutely refused to be moved on. Every time she tried to talk to him about it, he'd just refuse, the stubborn Scot bastard. Another thing he refused to talk about was what'd been done to him. She _knew_ that something had happened, something terrible to change him on such a level, not just mentally and personally, but physically as well. Those growling noises he made were beyond the range of human ability, and his senses were far better than she could've ever imagined. Once he'd heard her mobile, which she'd left in her room upstairs, from his seat on the couch downstairs; the mobile had been set on vibrate. He had somehow been able to hear its buzzing from across the bloody house. Whenever she attempted to approach the topic, no matter how tactfully, he'd shut down and refuse to speak to her again. It was maddening.

Still, things had settled into almost a kind of routine. Once or twice she would come home to find him gone, but he'd still return, usually past midnight, and sometimes he'd come back with fresh blood and bruises. He refused to talk about those, either, but he would sit quite docilely whilst she cleaned off his wounds and scolded him about staying out so damned late without letting her know. She didn't want to admit it, but she was considering the idea of telling Lester about her fugitive houseguest.

As she headed down the hall, she passed by the spare room where Cutter had been sleeping, the door half-open, and the movement from within automatically drew her gaze to the man just as he pulled his slept-in shirt off over his head, back towards the door. Jenny froze dead in her tracks, jaw falling open in mute shock. Across his shoulders and biceps were stripes, almost like tattoos on his skin. There were four on each side, one at the edge of his collarbone, two on the curve where his arm met his shoulder, and one across his bicep. The stripes curved over his shoulders and ended on his back just near his shoulder blades. They almost resembled black war paint against his fair skin. It wasn't just on his shoulders, either. Two more stripes marked each side below his ribcage, and she could just see the dark line of another set on his hips peeking above the waist of his trousers. But it wasn't just the stripes. There were scars, raised welts of shiny tissue that lined his back and shoulders and chest, over his stomach and arms. There were burns and claw marks, some that even looked like bites. There was one in particular that made her shiver: two deep parallel gashes that tore across his back from shoulder to hip; there was no third claw, which meant it could only be one thing—the dual claws of a Future Predator.

"Had a good look, then?" he asked abruptly, snapping her out of her brief entrancement. He was staring at her, a steely look in his eyes, and she felt her cheeks flame in embarrassment having been caught staring.

"I-I'm sorry," she stammered. "Are those from…from what happened to you?"

Cutter jerked a t-shirt over his head, jaw tight as he pulled the fabric over the stripes and scars. "Yeah. I'm not human, remember?" he said stiffly.

"Then what are you?" she asked. His cold glare could've cut steel; she realised what she'd said, and she bit her lip anxiously. She had never been so direct in asking him about what had been done to him because it was such a sensitive subject to him. And now she'd gone and just stuck a pin right into the open wound. "I-I mean, uhm—"

His eyes went to slits, and he strode out of the room, somehow managing to slide past her without ever touching her. A half-second later, she heard the front door slam so loud that it echoed. Jenny let out a heavy sigh, shaking her head. _Great. Wonderful. Very tactful, Jenny. Spot on,_ she mentally congratulated herself. She'd been trying for days to get through to him, trying to earn his trust piece by piece, and just like that, she'd managed to piss him off enough that he probably wouldn't be talking to her for days. "Damn it," she muttered under her breath. Moving to the window, she watched as he slipped off out the back, jumping the fence like it was nothing. A thought lit up in her mind as sudden and brilliant as a flash of lightning. He refused to tell her where he went on his odd outings? Fine. She'd just have to find out for herself. Hastening down the stairs, she grabbed her jacket and car keys on the way out the door.


	5. Curiosity Killed the Cat

Jenny parked the car in an empty lot and shut off the engine, peering through the windscreen. She could just make out Cutter's figure as he disappeared into some kind of industrial warehouse. The place looked as if it hadn't been inhabited in years, and she was somewhat surprised that it hadn't been condemned yet. What in the world was he doing in a place like this? For a moment she sat there in indecision, torn between the curiosity that pulled her towards the warehouse and the little voice that warned her not to go any closer, to just turn around and go home. The professor had told her once before that whatever he did when he left was important, and it was equally important that she leave it alone. But if he honestly thought she'd simply obey him and do whatever he asked, then they were going to need to have quite a serious discussion.

After a few moments of internal debate, she got out of her car and locked it behind her, making her way across the lot towards the warehouse. If she had known that the professor had already left out the back way, though, she might not have been quite so confident in walking in there by herself. As she stepped into the shadow of the warehouse, she got that spine-tingling, hair-raising feeling of someone or some _thing_ watching her. Plucking up her courage, though, she continued forward and pushed open the door, edging her way inside.

Her first thought was _God, what an almighty mess._ There was hardly a surface in the entire building not covered in a fine layer of dust and/or grime. Most of the windows were either boarded up or darkened with blackout paint, creating a dim, cave-like setting. The air smelled of something heavy and musky, almost like someone had been keeping animals but not quite that. She couldn't see anybody else around in the warehouse. "Hello?" she called hesitantly; her voice echoed slightly in the cavernous warehouse.

The door closed with a soft _snap_ that sounded loud as a gunshot in the silence, and Jenny whirled on heel. A woman stood beside the door, one hand still resting on the door itself. She was unbelievably beautiful, with thick red hair and gorgeous cat-green eyes; unable to help herself, Jenny felt a slight pang of jealousy. Pushing the feeling aside, she straightened her back and lifted her chin slightly. "Who are you?"

The redheaded woman didn't answer, instead inhaling a deep breath through her nose. "Ah...so you're the little bit of pretty that he's been shacking up with," she said, her accent peculiar, definitely something foreign. Her voice was a rich, seductive purr, like velvet rubbed the wrong way, just like Cutter's was. There was a strange gleam in her eyes that Jenny didn't like to see. "I wondered when we'd get the chance to meet you."

"Who are you? Where's Cutter?" Jenny demanded again. The soft rustle of movement made her head turn. On the catwalk above, she could see several other people, their forms melting out of the shadows; in the dim light, their eyes seemed the only thing alive about them, gleaming eerily in the gloom. They all stared down at her with unnerving intensity, hissing softly. Several more appeared from the murky depths of the warehouse, prowling forward with unnatural silence, watching her. She felt a tremor of fear beneath her breastbone, throat going dry.

"Y'know," said the red-haired woman as she stepped forward, moving with an easy languor that didn't resemble anything human, "it really wasn't too bright of you, coming here by yourself. Surely he ought to have warned you about us." Her green gaze narrowed on Jenny as her lips drew back from her teeth, but it wasn't a smile. It was a feral expression, like a predator's show of teeth before the kill. "Not everyone has his sense of self-control. Now, usually, I wouldn't approve of this, but seeing as how you walked so willingly in here, I'll make an exception."

"Approve of wh—?" Jenny started to ask, but then something slammed into her, catching her around the waist and throwing her to the floor roughly. The impact knocked the breath out of her, and as she gasped for a breath, she blew stray strands of hair out of her face. A man, dressed in ragged, unwashed clothes, looking as if he hadn't seen a shower or a bar of soap in two weeks, crouched over her, lips thinned across his teeth. His hands gripped her arms so tight that he near cut off circulation; his nails dug into her biceps.

The redhead crouched on her heels, a predatory smile on her lips; the tips of her canines were visible, just the slightest hint of fangs. "Try not to break her too badly. The rest of us will want to play after you," she said, addressing the man.

Cold realisation flooding through her, Jenny started to scream, but then the man seized her by the arms, lifted her up, and slammed her back against the ground with enough force that all her breath rushed out in a whoosh. The back of her skull hit the concrete so hard that sparks flew across her eyes.

The man gave a low snarl, bending his head to bury his face in her hair, his hot, sour-smelling breath damp against her ear. "You _do_ smell good," he hissed, then gave a hoarse chuckle. "Good enough to eat."

She felt her blood run cold as his hard, cool hands pushed up under her blouse, working their way up towards her breasts. Jenny began hyperventilating, kicking and squirming beneath him, going so far as to try and bite. "Let me go! Get off me!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. Panicked, her eyes flew to the other people that lingered in the shadows. "Help me! Please, help me!" None of the others were moving, though. The thin, bedraggled people in the warehouse were watching her with their eerie eyes, making peculiar animal noises that sounded for all the world like encouragement. "Get off! Let go of me! No! Get off me!" No matter how hard she struck at the man, he never even flinched; she might have been hitting a brick wall for all the results she got. His hands withdrew from her blouse, but then she felt him seize the hem of her skirt. With a loud _riiiip_ of rendering fabric, he tore the skirt up the front almost to her waist. She screamed again, feeling so pathetically helpless….

A roar of animal fury split the air, so deep that she could feel it resonating in her bones. A shadow loomed over her, and then the heavy weight of the man was torn off her. Jenny scrambled back, sitting up with heart in her throat. She saw a flash of pale gold-and-black hair and realised that it was Cutter that'd pulled the man off her. More snarling and growling echoed in the warehouse, underlain with the deep thud of blows being landed. After a moment, the man scrambled away on hands and knees, blood gushing from his mouth and nose, and Cutter spun towards her. The look in his eyes was one of such fury that she shrank back. Without a word, he seized her by the arms, dragged her to her feet, and hauled her out of the dimly lit warehouse. "Nick, I—" she tried to say, but he gave a short, harsh snarl, stifling her words.

He didn't speak until they'd reached the otherwise-empty lot where she'd parked. He swung her around to stand in front of him, both large hands grasping her shoulders as he pinned her back against the side of the car. "Are you out of your goddamn mind?" Cutter demanded; his voice was low but laden with white-hot fury. "What in the _hell_ were you thinking, following me here? Do you have any idea what you've done?" he snapped, giving her a little shake. "I told you before that what I was doing was none of your business!"

"Nick…" she whispered in a trembling voice. The shock of what'd been done—and what'd nearly happened—was setting in, and she was beginning to quiver. Heat prickled behind her eyes, her vision blurred, and then she felt tears spill over her lashes. Her breath hitched on a weak sob.

All at once, the fury in his eyes disappeared, and he lifted a hand to her cheek, brushing tears off her skin. "Are you alright, love?" he asked softly, other hand coming up to caress the back of her neck. "Did he hurt you?" Gentle fingers slid into her hair, gingerly feeling around the tender spot where her head struck the concrete floor.

Jenny felt her breath come in another gasping sob, throat tight, and she buried her head against his chest, putting her arms around his waist. Cutter gently wrapped his own arms around her and held her to him. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she whispered against the jacket lapel. He shushed her gently, stroking a hand down her hair. For several minutes she stood in his arms, feeling weak, shaky, trying to soak up some of the heat and strength he exuded like an aura, head tucked against his chest. Then she peered through her lashes at the warehouse, barely visible from where they stood in the lot; a chill ran through her. "What are they, Nick? What's happened to them?" she asked in a ragged whisper.

Cutter was silent for several long moments, resting his chin atop her head. "You want to know?" he asked, then sighed quietly when she nodded against his chest. "I'll tell you. I'll tell all of you, at the ARC, tomorrow. But for now, let's just go home."

* * *

The wind felt cold; it eddied across the rooftops, whispering the secrets of the city in their ears. Echo watched the interaction between the hybrid and the human in the lot below as the breeze tugged at his hair, making it dance about his face, strands curling about his ears and neck and cheeks. His hair would be serpentine by the time he returned to the mouse tunnels.

It was quite curious. The spider had designed the hybrids to be animals in human skins, creatures of bloodshed and violence and rendering flesh. Yet this one held the delicate human female with utmost gentleness, not using any of its enormous strength to damage her. Echo Thirteen Omega wondered how the creature had managed to subvert its programming and resist the instinct to kill.

Alpha Nine Sigma crouched at the edge of the roof beside him, his thoughts coloured indigo with curiosity as he too watched the hybrid and human female interact. He and Zulu Twelve Phi had discovered the cross-bred creatures when they'd left the tunnels in search of food, and they had tracked them back to the place they had made their den. Zulu was back in the tunnels now, enjoying their pilfered spoils with the others, and now he and Echo were as hawks on the roof, watching mice in the field below. "It does not attack," Alpha said, all yellow and scaly with confusion.

"The tiger is a fearsome creature, but the lead is in her hand," Echo realised, watching as the hybrid held the female close."He snarls when it is made of chains, but she holds him by the heartstrings and makes him purr instead."

Alpha tilted his head to the side, the wind pulling at his hair as well. It was not as long as Echo's and did not become serpentine as the zephyr made it dance. "She holds him by the heartstrings," he reiterated in contemplation. "What do we do with it, then?"

"The tiger commands the pride. She commands the tiger. We need not kill them," decided Echo as he watched the female lead the creature away; he could hear the other animals growling behind their human masks, still lurking in their den. "They will be our bait. When the spider comes in search of her pets, then we will be the ones lying in wait." He reached down and pulled the long-bladed knife from the sheath on his leg, tilting it so that the sun sparkled off its edges in beautiful silver. "The serpent coils to strike. Our fangs are bared," he said softly.

* * *

The next morning, Jenny wore a long-sleeved blouse to hide the hand-shaped bruises on her upper arms where the man in the warehouse had gripped her tight. The sore spot on the back of her head had become a painful knot, but two aspirin and an icepack eased the discomfort away. A part of her was elated, knowing that she had at last managed to convince Cutter to return to the ARC. Granted, she wished that it hadn't taken an assault on her to persuade him. She decided not to do anything with her hair and left it down, bouncing around her shoulders as she walked out of the bathroom, making her way back downstairs.

Cutter sat at the kitchen table waiting for her. He had both long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankle, with one arm folded behind his head. Though his position appeared languid, his pale blue eyes were alert and aware, missing nothing. After some coaxing, she'd talked him into letting her trim his hair, and now the black-and-gold strands just brushed the collar of his military jacket. All his bruises and scrapes were gone, though it should have been a few weeks before they healed entirely. He looked himself again, if only for a brief moment. "Morning," he said.

The rich sound of his voice was not quite as shocking to her anymore, though it still made a little tremor curl in her belly. "Morning," she replied in what had become their usual greeting. She walked over to the counter and opened her purse. "This is yours, I do believe." She took out an ID pass, holding it out—his ID pass. His eyebrows lifted in surprise and amusement, knowing that she must've broken into somewhere to retrieve it. "You'll need it to get back inside. Are you sure about this, Nick?"

The professor gave a small, wan smile, reaching up and taking the pass from her. "Not at all. So let's go before I come to my senses and change my mind." He slipped the pass into his pocket and got to his feet; she didn't remember him ever being quite so tall before.

The drive to the ARC was quiet, but she didn't try to make him talk. He just stared out the window, watching the city rush by outside. The guards must not have been up to speed, either, because they didn't look twice when they checked the professor's pass. She parked the car and looked at him across the console; he had his eyes closed, head back against the seat. "Shall we, then?" she asked softly.

After a long pause, he nodded. They got out of the car and made their way across the car park. He lifted his jacket hood as they passed the guards, ducking his head to avoid being seen, hands in his pockets. He was bristling with awareness, all his senses expanded to take in his surroundings; the animal in him was snarling, prowling back and forth in agitation. The clean, antiseptic smell of the place triggered memories of the Complex, the lab techs and scientists reminding him of the madmen that'd turned him into whatever violent creature he was now. Only by keeping eyes on Jenny was he able to keep from bolting out of there.

Jenny brought him to the only place she thought appropriate—his old office. The time map had never been put back together after its destruction, and most of his research had been packed away in boxes that were stacked up in the corners. "Wait in here. I'll go and get the others, okay?" she said quietly, turning to look at him. Tension hummed in his shoulders, but he seemed a little more at ease now that he was in familiar surroundings. "Nick?"

He nodded.

"Don't run off again, please."

The corners of his mouth twitched. "No promises."

"Nick…."

"Kidding. Go get the others."

She left him in the old office, making her way around the rest of the ARC and finding the rest of the team. Abby was, as usual, in the botany lab tending to all the strange, exotic plants that she'd gathered from different time periods, spraying them with water and making notes on their growth. Stephen was with Sarah in another lab, the two of them working on the computerized version of Cutter's time map, and Danny was with Becker, playing around with security—apparently the copper got to abseil down a ventilation shaft this time. All she told them was to follow her, saying that there was something important she had to show them.

As the rest of them followed her back into the office, Jenny felt a knot settle in her stomach like a ten-tonne weight. She dreaded what would happen when he met the team again. Last time had been quite the disaster. When they walked in, she felt a slight tremor of fear when she didn't see Cutter, but then she noticed the shadow on the other side of the door and relaxed. "Alright, then, Jen, what are we all doing here?" asked Danny with a cocky, lazy smile, hands pushed in his pockets.

"There's something quite important I've got to tell you," she said, hands clasped in front of her.

"What is it?" Becker queried, eyebrows lifted.

She didn't know quite what to say, but as it turned out she didn't really need to. The door swung shut with a snap, revealing Cutter standing on the other side. He leant up against the wall; his pale blue gaze raked over them all. "Good to see you lot again," he said amicably.


	6. Lead or Follow

Weapons cleared holsters in record time as Becker drew a pistol, but before his arm came up, Cutter's low voice rippled across the silence. "Point that gun at me, Captain, and I'll feed it to you," he cautioned in a growl, glaring at the black-clad soldier; Becker hesitated at the dead serious tone of the other man's voice, then his arm lowered back to his side, but he didn't put the pistol away.

"He's come back to help," said Jenny firmly, one hand fisted on the professor's sleeve as she moved slightly in front of him, protective. Cutter found it amusing and a bit vexing, seeing a delicate woman nearly eight years his junior move to protect him, but he had to say he rather appreciated the gesture.

"He escaped the custody of the Home Office, Jen, he's a bloody fugitive," Danny countered, looking ready to sound the alarm.

"Stuff it, Quinn," Stephen barked at the former copper, then stepped closer to the professor, steps small and measured, wound tight as a snare drum. His dark blue gaze combed over the pale-haired man, keenly searching. He must have seen something he was looking for; a weak smile came to his face, and he wrapped both arms around the professor in a tight hug. For a moment, Cutter simply stood immobile, face expressionless, then sighed and ever-so-slightly leant into the hug. When Stephen drew back, the lab tech grinned. "You're back," he said.

"Somewhat," Cutter replied, glancing back at the others. "I've come back to tell you lot some rather important things. Now, go fetch Lester. He'll want to hear this."

* * *

Lester ranted for a good bit at seeing the professor again, furious that Cutter had so easily reentered the ARC, but he positively turned livid when he found out that Jenny had helped, harbouring the professor in her home for over a week without telling anyone else whilst they all ran about like chickens with heads cut off looking for him. Surprisingly, the PR took the telling-off without reply or argument, sitting not quite demurely but more unapologetically. She didn't speak, but they knew that she didn't regret anything.

When the suited man had at last vented his spleen at Jenny and Cutter alike, he sat back in his chair with a huff. They were in an otherwise empty conference room, all the rest of the team, including Becker and Danny. The only one still standing, Cutter glanced over at Lester. "So…can I talk now?" he asked.

"Speak," Lester snapped, eyes closed as he pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, waving the other hand dismissively.

"Last year, when Helen set off the explosion in the ARC, when I went back to find her, she tranquilised me and then Connor when he came to help me. She had the two of us dragged through an anomaly and brought us to a research complex in the Triassic that specialised in genetic engineering." Cutter paused slightly, and they could see the ghosts that moved in his eyes. "She had me and over three hundred other people undergo a series of medical procedures to genetically alter us."

Stephen sat up slightly in his chair. "Nick…."

"I know you don't want to think that she'd do it, Stephen, but it's the truth," the Scotsman said, cutting the other man off. "They…they spliced my genomes and new DNA was grafted into my genes. I don't know where or how, but she got hold of enough future technology to manage it. She made us into hybrids. I never found out for certain, but I think she wanted us to be soldiers, something a little more dynamic than her clones."

"You wouldn't have done it," Abby protested, shaking her head. "Why would she even bother? There's no way that she could've…"

"Oh, but there is a way," Cutter replied softly. "She had her pet scientists develop an impulse regulator chip that was supposed to be implanted in our brains. It set off a series of electrical pulses that would basically allow her to remote-control our brains. Don't worry," he added when they looked at him in alarm, "I don't have one. I escaped before they got around to it, but she's already got at least 150 or so chipped and trained. A lot died, and a handful of the ones without regulator chips, myself included, escaped the Complex. We all have feline DNA grafted into our genes. Lion, jaguar, panther, leopard, lynx. I myself am now part _Panthera tigris altaica,_ which is more commonly known as the Siberian tiger. There were a few physical side-effects." He pushed a hand back through his gold-and-black hair, raking the long strands back out of his face. "But a lot of it is instinctual thinking. The need to hunt, to stalk and kill, that's what she was after. Therein lies a problem. The impulse regulator chip allows Helen to control our brains, but at the same time, it also represses our predatory instinct enough that we aren't all animal. I was never given the chip, so my instincts aren't regressed. As it is I feel rather inclined to rip your throat out, Lester, for shouting at me."

The suited man looked indignant, narrowing his gaze at the other man.

"There are about fifty other felid hybrids that escaped the Complex here in London. I have them in hiding. None of them have the regulator chips, either, and they haven't managed to keep it together quite as well as I have. They've gone quite…feral." He glanced over at Jenny, and a meaningful look passed between the two of them. "But seeing as how they do have feline instinct, they operate in a kind of pride hierarchy. Right now, I'm leader of the pride and they'll follow me. There are still a few that can be reasoned with."

"Are there any others like you?" Stephen asked, staring at the professor with new consideration and curiosity.

"Tigers, you mean?" Cutter wondered, and the lab tech nodded. "No. That's just me. Helen decided that I was…special." He said the word bitterly. "All the others are jaguars, lions, leopards, pumas, lynxes. The ones that Helen has chipped and under her control are all canine hybrids—wolves, foxes, hyenas, coyotes. But to be honest…we're not what you really need to worry about."

Lester's head snapped up at that. "What do you mean?"

Cutter sank down into a chair, looking weary. "We, the hybrids, were made to be soldiers, but Helen wanted something that was a bit more…efficient, deadlier to protect her. Her very own Praetorian Guard. I don't know that much about it because they were kept separate from the hybrids. As far as I know, there were only twelve that survived. They were called the Deadly Dozen. Twelve genetically engineered soldiers especially made to be living, breathing weapons. They're quite possibly the only thing in the world more dangerous than the hybrids. When we escaped the Complex, they escaped as well and disappeared. I think that they're in London though. The big problem with the Dozen is that Helen never got the chance to finish them either. If their behavioural conditioning was ever triggered, I doubt that there's much of anything that could stop them. She never got around to installing an 'off' switch in their programming. Hybrids were always kept separate from the Dozen, so I couldn't tell you what they look like, but I know they'll be together. They were designed to work as a unit. From what I've overheard from the other scientists in the Complex, Helen did things to their brains to remove their memories, brainwashing them. But still, I couldn't tell you how much they're really affected because I've never met them."

Jenny sat forward, looking at him closely. "What makes you think that they're in London?" she asked.

He raised his gaze to her. "Just a…feeling I've got."

"These Dozen," said Lester icily, "they have names, I presume?"

"They were only ever called by their subject names," Cutter replied. "I think the scientists never really saw them as people at all, just lab rats."

Lester stared at the Scotsman coldly. "And these genetic changes, they are what account for the rather…unusual markers in your bloodwork?" he asked.

"Aye." His eyes went sharp and cold. "And if you think that I'm going to be strapped down in some lab to be poked and prodded, you are quite mistaken."

"Professor Cutter, there will be no experimentation on you other than what is necessary for the ARC medics to create a new baseline," replied the other man with an expression on his face that might have passed for some facsimile of a smile.

There was a brief silence, all of them contemplating this new information. But then Abby's soft voice broke the quiet. "Nick," she said, and the professor's gaze looked to her, surprised by her use of his first name. "What happened to Connor?"

At this, he sobered. "I don't know, Abby. I'm sorry. I just know that Helen had him brought to the Complex with me. I…I know what I said before, and I'm sorry. But you have to understand…the things that happened in the Complex, the things that she did to us..." He paused and shook his head slowly. "Someone like Connor should never have to go through anything like that."

She bit her lip, sliding a little lower in her chair; Stephen placed a hand on her shoulder in brotherly comfort.

With that, Lester decided that the meeting was adjourned. There would be time to work things out in the coming weeks, and at the moment, he had quite a bit of paperwork to do in order to legally bring Cutter back to life.

As they gathered in the hub, the professor walked over to Danny. "I don't believe we've ever been properly introduced," he said.

"We haven't. I'm Detective Constable Danny Quinn. You're the famous Professor Cutter. I've heard quite a bit about you," replied the ginger man, holding out one hand.

"Ah…so you are my replacement then." Cutter's pale blue gaze raked over Danny with a look of cool disdain. The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. "I must say, Lester really lowered the bar when I was taken."

The copper's arm lowered to his side as he bristled. "What'd you say?"

"I said, Lester must have really lowered the bar if he hired you," the Scotsman reiterated coldly, enunciating each word. "What's the matter? Are my words too long for you? Need make more simple?"

"Nick…" Jenny gasped softly. This was not good.

"Don't worry about it, Jen," replied Danny in a hard voice, still glaring at Cutter. "He's just a bitter old bastard that doesn't like the idea of being replaced."

They barely even saw him move. Had anybody blinked, they would have missed the movement entirely. One instant Cutter was sitting on the edge of the table, the next he was on his feet and across the room. He seized Danny by the wrist, knocked the gun from his other hand before it could even clear the holster, and twisted his arm behind his back. The copper let out a small, surprised cry of pain, having bent almost double from the pressure being exerted on his arm. Cutter gripped his wrist tightly, holding him still. "Excruciating, isn't it?" The professor's tone was wholly blasé, as if they were two mates discussing the weather. "See, in the year I was gone, in the Complex I mentioned before, I learnt quite a lot about pain. How to endure it, how to channel it. How to cause it. I've seen and done things that would make you cry for mercy, boy," he said, voice slipping low into dark, icy tones layered in a growl. "Now if I really wanted to, I could twist your arm so hard that not only would it be dislocated from your shoulder, you'd need surgery to repair the torn tendon and muscle. Even then, you might not ever get full use of your arm back. Seeing as how I am such a 'bitter old bastard', I think I might do just that." He exerted just a little more pressure, just enough to make Danny gasp in agony, eyes watering; the others simply stood watching, too stunned to move. In his peripheral vision, Cutter could see Jenny staring at him with pleading eyes. The animal inside him reluctantly retreated its fury at her silent request; odd, how only she could ever get through to the beast. "But…I suppose I won't, but only because someone with more mercy and compassion than I will ever have has asked me not to." He didn't look at Jenny, but she knew he was talking about her. He released the ginger man's wrist, and Danny fell to his knees, clutching at his shoulder in pain, teeth gritted. "Now, Quinn, do remember that I am still part animal, and the creature inside me would not hesitate to take your throat out with his teeth,"he said, his velvety voice dragging across their nerves like a physical thing, making them all shiver at the sound. "My advice is quite simple—lead, follow, or stay the hell out of the way."

* * *

Echo had set up his trap, all his brothers and sisters set up just so. A part of him revelled in fierce glee, knowing that they were the ones with the web now spun, now the hunters instead of the hunted. He was in control at last.

He and ten others kept careful watch upon the den of the hybrids, aware that the pride was a savage entity that did not bode well in cages. If the animals slipped the leash, it would be their task to put down the wild animals before their blood-soaked task was completed. If the spider of doors returned to claim her pets, then the serpents would be waiting with fangs bared and dripping poison in readiness. But one of their number had another task. The tiger could not be left to wander free. The human female might hold the lead, but she was a delicate little china doll. A clumsy hand would cause her to shatter, and then the beast would be unchained.

It was Whiskey Two Lambda that decided to follow the tiger, to slip and sneak about and be watchman of the creature from afar. He was the swiftest of their number, fast on his feet with all the silent stealth of a shadow to match. Echo hesitated to send one on his own, instead of two by two as was their habit, but he knew that it was the wisest path to take. Whiskey was no toothless earthworm helpless to defend itself; he was a serpent armed with fang and venom. Should the cat trod upon him, he could strike with deadly accuracy. The silver cord still bound them all—Whiskey was not alone.

Nevertheless, they all shivered at his departure, disliking the distance that came between them. The cord was stretched thin, only the finest filament of gleaming silver connecting him to them. Echo drew his knife, slowly running his fingertips along the edges of the glistening blade, hearing its crystalline hum of anticipation. The game was on. The pieces were in motion. Now all they had to do was wait for the spider to make her move.

* * *

Later, when Cutter sat by himself in his old office, Jenny came to see him. She was the only person brave enough to just walk into the office without knocking first, closing the door behind her. "Thank you, Nick," she said softly. "I know you could've hurt him; I'm glad you didn't."

He raised his gaze to her. "I was telling the truth, what I said. I could've pulled his arm right out its socket, and it wouldn't hardly be any effort at all. If you hadn't asked me not to, I would have done it," he said, trying to will her to understand that he had changed. He wasn't the man he'd been a year ago. He still cared about her as more than a friend, and he was starting to believe she cared about him the same way, but there was no way they could ever work out together if she didn't recognise that change. "I am a violent creature. I know pain and violence on a level that humans can't comprehend. It's what I was designed for."

She stepped closer to him, unafraid, almost challenging. She wasn't afraid of this man, no matter how fearsome he appeared to the others, no matter how savage he acted, because she knew he'd never hurt her. "But that isn't all you are. I know it isn't. I know you, Nick Cutter. You might be different than you were, but I still know the man you are, animal or no." She had seen him with his defences down before, had heard him screaming from his nightmares, had held him when he broke down. Reaching down, she grasped his hands in hers, noticing how small and pale she seemed in comparison to him. He could break bones with these hands, but she had also felt him hold her with utmost gentleness. "I know you," she repeated.

Cutter slid his hands from hers, put his arms around her waist, and buried his head against her soft stomach, eyes closed as he slowly rubbed his cheek against the warm, silken material of her blouse like a cat. She gently stroked the top of his hair, arm resting around him. A low rumbling noise began in his chest, the sound akin to sheet metal grinding together or the roll of distant thunder. It was one of the physiological changes brought on by his genetic altercations, the ability to growl the way no human could. To anyone else, it was a ferocious, bloodcurdling snarl of animal savagery, but Jenny knew it to be different. She had heard him growl in anger before, and this wasn't it. Her ears were keen enough to pick up a new note in the sound, just the slightest change in the timbre that altered its entire mood: a note that was the faintest croon of content that only she could hear. It wasn't exactly a purr—tigers, like most of the Big Cats, couldn't purr—but it was the closest thing to it that he could produce. She smiled, gently scratching her nails against his scalp, and he burrowed his head further into her belly as he rumbled his low love-growl.

The ADD alarm began going off. The timbre of his voice chanced once more, his growl becoming real, not wanting to leave this warm, comfortable embrace. Jenny smiled and patted the top of his head. "Come on, be nice. We've got work to do yet."

* * *

Whiskey had offered to follow the tiger whilst his other brothers and sisters kept watch over the pride, silently looming and waiting for the inevitable return of the spider. He did not fear the hybrid—he had fought and killed far worse when he was still a marionette within the Complex, all tied up in sticky thread.

Echo Thirteen Omega had been wise, choosing to divide and conquer rather than to remain together. No hybrid, be it tiger or kitten, should be left to simply roam free and cause havoc where it would. They had to be watched, monitored, and if the need arose, ended. Even now he could feel the blades at his sides humming with anticipation, their note higher than perceptible. The crystalline ring of the knives mingled with the low musical clanking of the pistols in his jacket and the sweet hum of the silver cord inside his mind, enriched by the lower notes of the city's heartbeat and the river's flow. He could hear it all and moved in perfect synchronicity with it, each footstep exactly in time and balanced in tempo.

The hybrid was leaving. Whiskey didn't recognise this building, but its own song was deep and rumbling as the roll of distant thunder, too akin to the Complex to be trusted. Several other humans went with it, including the little china doll female what held the tiger's lead.

He followed.


	7. Whiskey Two Lambda

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"You aren't supposed to be here," said Danny as they got out of the trucks, glaring over at Cutter. The anomaly had been traced down to a shipyard, but all the metal was distorting the signal, so they would have to search the old-fashioned way—by wandering about on foot looking.

The professor's mouth curled up in a grin, returning the glare with an equally-icy look. "Are you going to try and arrest me, Danny-boy?" he asked.

"Boys, if you can't play nice, you can't play together," scolded Jenny. "Let's hurry up and get this done."

As the rest of the team moved away, splitting up to widen the search, Cutter paused. Slowly, he turned his gaze to look at the looming shape of a nearby storage warehouse, and he felt the back of his neck prickle with a new awareness. Narrowing his eyes slightly at the building, he walked over, pushed open the door, and walked into the empty storage house, senses expanded. There was something in here. He knew it. He could _feel_ it. The wind shifted, sending a draught through the storage house, and with it came a new scent, the smell of metal and blood and chemicals. All at once, Cutter went rigid, heart rising into his throat. He knew that scent. It was the smell of the Deadly Dozen, the same scent that had clung to the scientists in the Complex. They were close, too, or had been there only a moment ago for the scent to be so strong. He stood still as he really expanded his senses, feeling the world come alive around him. Suddenly he could hear the soft whisper of air blowing across the cracks in the wall, hear mice scurrying in their tunnels. The smell of mold and slow rot near gagged him. And he could hear the near-silent breathing of another person, another heart beating at a rate closer to his own than to a human's.

From above.

Without looking up—that would've been far too obvious—he tilted his wrist ever-so-slightly; in the glass face of his watch, he could see the reflection of the ceiling…and the slender, black-clad figure of another person crouched on the rafters. He curled one hand around a piece of broken metal rebar, and without warning, he whirled around and threw the rebar towards the ceiling like a javelin towards the figure in the rafters. Only the lightning-fast reflexes of the Dozen saved their life. It—he didn't know if it was male or female—flattened itself to the rafter; the spear passed less than a scant half-inch over its back, slamming into the ceiling, quivering slightly.

Flowing like water, the member of the Dozen sprung from the rafter, caught a metal bar in midair, swung around like a gymnast, and dropped to the floor. It was a man, sheathed head-to-toe in black, with marble-white skin and a mess of riotous black curls; pale, unearthly silvery blue eyes stared at Cutter. He didn't look very dangerous, but Cutter had learnt a long time ago not to judge by appearances. "So…which one are you then? Four? Nine? Eleven?" the professor asked as he began to circle the black-clad man; the other subject matched him step for step, the two of them slowly circling each other with dangerous grace.

"I am Whiskey Two Lambda," said the curly-haired man. In contrast to his thin, bony figure, his voice was deep and rumbling, a velvety baritone that would make most women go weak at the knees. He drew a pair of long, double-edged knives from the sheaths strapped to his thighs, tilting the blades just so, light gleaming silver off their edges. He pointed the knife at Cutter. "You are incomplete, hybrid."

"So are you," he replied.

Whiskey twirled the blade with deadly skill, the keen edge of the knife whistling through the air. "Yes." A shudder went through him, a slight twitching, almost like a nervous tick, and a flicker of some darkness passing through his eyes. His long-fingered hands tightened around the hilt of the knives. Only the faint tensing of the muscles in his shoulders gave warning before he flew at Cutter with blades flashing.

The professor hissed angrily, only his feline reflexes saving him from having his throat cut open. Even so, the blade passed so close to his throat that he felt the breeze. He never thought it'd happen, but he actually was grateful for the vicious training exercises he'd been put through in the Complex, otherwise he'd never have been able to move fast enough to dodge the knives that hissed through the air.

Whiskey Two Lambda twisted and flowed like quicksilver; his eyes were flat, though, dead, empty. He was fully in the grip of his behavioural conditioning—the lights were on, but nobody was home. Cutter was pushing the limits of his speed to keep from being cut to ribbons; the only thing he'd ever seen move this fast was a Future Predator. Suddenly a flare of pain lit up white-hot across his chest, and he let out a short snarl of pain. One of Whiskey's blades was now edged in scarlet; a long thin gash wept blood down Cutter's chest.

When the man's arm swept back towards him, Cutter dodged back and raked his claws down Whiskey's forearm, hot blood welling up beneath his fingers. He cried out in equal pain, dropping the knife, and Cutter kicked it out of the way. For an instant, they jumped apart, staring at each other. They weren't even breathing hard, but they were both bleeding—Cutter from the chest and Whiskey from the arm. But then Whiskey came towards him again, still wielding the other knife.

Cutter ducked beneath the shining silver arc, shot his hand out, and gripped Whiskey's injured arm, digging his fingers into the wounds. Agony exploded in his shoulder, and the professor let out a strangled cry of pain. Suddenly he couldn't move his left arm quite so well. But then, just like that, the curly-haired man collapsed limp on the floor like a marionette with its strings cut, eyes closed. For a moment, Cutter stood there gasping in pain, feeling the hot, sticky wetness of blood flowing down his back; both of Whiskey's hands were empty, so it only stood to reason that the other knife was currently buried in his shoulder and was the focal point of the fiery, white-hot pain there. Gritting his teeth, Cutter raised his right hand, reached over his shoulder, and curled his fingers around the hilt of the knife. The pain made his head spin; clenching his jaw, he ripped the knife clean out of his shoulder, black spots dancing in front of his eyes.

As he dropped the bloody knife to the floor, the door of the storage house opened, and the others came rushing in. When they caught sight of him standing there, covered in blood with an unconscious man at his feet, they all went still, eyes wide and mouths hanging open. Cutter took several deep, cleansing breaths through his nose. "Get him in restraints and back to the ARC. The others are going to know he's missing soon," he ground out.

His words apparently did something that snapped them out of their trance because Jenny ran forward to him with concern in her dark eyes. "Oh, God, Nick, what happened to you?" she cried. She looked at his blood-sodden shoulder and bit her lip in anxiety. Carefully, Jenny peeled the fabric away from his skin, apologising as he hissed through his teeth.

"What the hell happened in here?" asked Becker, crouching on his heels beside the unconscious man and checking for a pulse.

"He's one of the Deadly Dozen, the ones I warned you about," Cutter replied, voice layered with a growl of pain. A fresh flare of hot pain spasmed through his shoulder, and he jerked away from Jenny's fingers with a snarl as she accidentally touched the wound, and she hastily apologised. "I think he's been following us, or more accurately, following me. His behavioural conditioning, the brainwashing I told you about, it kicked in, and he attacked me. I don't think he even realised what he was doing. And then he just dropped. I don't know why."

All their eyes shifted to the pale, still form of the tall man lying on the floor. He looked like a stiff wind could knock him over...and _he_ was part of the Deadly Dozen?

"Yeah, I know," Cutter agreed. "Seriously, though, get him tied up before he comes around. He almost killed me, and I'm genetically engineered to be a fighter. He'll take you lot apart right quick." He glanced over at the ginger-haired copper standing nearby, and he couldn't help but ask acerbically, "Are you glad I'm here now, Danny-boy?"

* * *

Abby was back in the lab with her garden of exotic plants taken from past incursions when she realised it was missing. Horrified, she reached up and ran a hand over her neck and shoulders, but all she felt was her own smooth skin. The chain that she'd worn around her neck for the past year was no longer there. Feeling inexplicably terrified, she tore off her hoodie and jacket, shaking them out in hopes that the silver chain would come falling out of the fabric.

"Oh, no. No, no, no, no." Abby swore and ranted in anger even as tears came to her eyes. She had lost Connor's ring. It was the only thing of his that had been recovered from the ruins of the bombed ARC, and she had been wearing it since that day. She felt almost naked without it now. _Oh, God, why? Why did I have to lose it now?_ she thought in despair, on the verge of tears as she realised that she must've lost it at the anomaly site. She leant against the wall, slid down to sit on the floor, buried her face in her knees, and began to sob.

* * *

Lurking in the darkness like a stealthy little shadow, Echo Thirteen Omega lifted his head sharply, eyes wide as a spasm ran through his body from head to toe. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He had lost all input from Whiskey's neurolink. His thought processes had been cut off, severed as if a guillotine had fallen upon the silver cord. It was not as if he was sleeping, for even in slumber they could feel one another's thoughts. This was something _else,_ something _wrong._ Though he could not see them, he felt the others shiver in response, ruffling their thoughts in agitation. Echo reached, probing along the link that bound them all in silver cord. He could taste the thoughts of each of his siblings, like purple and copper on his tongue, but when he reached the place where the knot of Whiskey Two Lambda's thoughts were supposed to be, there was only a blank void. It had no colour or flavour, no sound or texture. It was simply nothing. He recoiled from it with a gasp of shock. That kind of nothingness had only been experienced once—in the Complex, when they were tied up in spider thread and sticky tar. Had the spider come for them once more and snared their brother in her web?

"Where is he?" murmured Foxtrot One Kappa nervously. Her mind had gone all indigo and waxy with fear.

"I do not know." Echo tightened his grip on the hilt of his knife, drawing the silver fang from its sheath, hearing the blade sing its liquid crystal notes. "We must find him. He will not fall to the spider or her puppets without the protection of the serpents." He paused for a moment. "November, Lima, India, and Zulu, you keep watch upon the den. We will retrieve our brother."

* * *

Jenny sat beside Cutter and looked closely at his shoulder. He'd been stabbed through the shoulder with a knife, yet by the time they arrived back in the ARC, the medic said the wound didn't even need stitches, just some bandaging and antiseptic. She could hardly believe it, even looking straight at it. The man that had been found unconscious—Cutter said he'd identified himself as Whiskey Two Lambda—was still deep under, strapped securely to a cot on the other side of the room. The man's arm was bound up in bandages. "Nick?" she asked quietly, and he glanced at her over his shoulder. "How did you do that to his arm?" He didn't have any weapons on him, nothing sharp or long enough to cause that kind of damage, yet Whiskey's arm had been carved deeply with something sharp, almost to the bone in some places.

The professor hesitated slightly, his back tensing beneath her hand, but then he turned around to face her. "Remember how I told you that those genetic experiments caused some…physical changes?" he asked, and she nodded, curious. "Well, it did a bit more than just change the colour of my hair and those stripes you saw on my shoulders," he admitted at last. She watched him closely, fascinated and intrigued by this. "Watch."

Taking a deep breath, he lifted one hand in front of her. As she watched, his fingernails retracted and a set of sharp claws pushed out from beneath them. Jenny's eyes widened in shock. They were pearly white with slightly translucent tips, hooked and no doubt sharp enough to shred flesh like gossamer. "All the felid hybrids have them," he said quietly. "It beat the hell out of the scientists in the Complex. I mean, they understood the stripes and the hair, but the claws…they never understood where it came from. Pretty damn useful, though."

"Amazing," she whispered. She took his hand, carefully running her fingertip over the curved claws, tracing the edges to the deadly point. Damn. To his utter shock, she looked up at him and smiled. "You are full of surprises, aren't you, Nick?" she asked, then kissed his cheek.

* * *

Echo stood in the midst of the empty warehouse, listening to the ghost-echo of the battle between serpent and tiger. He could still hear them, the cat's angry hiss and the responding snap of the blades, a ghost echo that shimmered and rebounded through the building. The evidence still remained, splatters of blood on the stone floors, and he knelt to touch it, pushing his fingers into the thick tackiness. "One of the spider's escaped pets. The hybrid, leader of the pride, _Panthera tigris altaica._ He wounded it."

"And it wounded him." Sierra Eighteen Zeta dipped her fingertips into another splatter of half-dried blood, a shiver moving across her body. She raised her blue-green eyes to his, shadows lurking within her thoughts, worry colouring her in olive. "The Manticore cannot function without all its parts."

"And it will not," Echo answered. "We will find him."

As they began moving away, moving to their new positions upon the board, Echo saw a faint gleam of silver amidst the grime on the floor. Curious, he stepped closer and leant down to study it closely. There was a fissure in the concrete—the constructors were foolish and did not understand the proper dimensions of sound flooring—and a small object was now trapped inside. He drew one silver fang and carefully freed the little object.

It was a ring cast in silver, tangled up in a thin shining chain. He could hear it singing quietly, a note so soft and dulcet that was almost imperceptible; it did not like being away from body-warmth and cried out for help. He dropped it into his palm, where it lay humming and cool, growing warm in his hand. Something about it was familiar, reminded him of the indescribably, uncertain Before, provided his sense of Before with some form of perimetres. He turned it over in his hand, tracing the dimensions of the ring and imprinting them in his mind. It made that little wisp of Before feel more tangible. Echo untangled the chain and slid it over his head; the ring lay warm against his chest, humming with satisfaction at being reunited with a body. His fractured mind felt just a little bit more intact.

* * *

Jenny stood over the tall form of the thin, slender man that had been brought in. His name—or, at least, his subject name—had been given as Whiskey Two Lambda. His arms and legs had both been tightly strapped down, straps also holding his torso to the cot. His lacerated arm had been tended to and bandaged, though the medics had said with much bafflement that the wounds were already starting to heal up and would probably be gone within a matter of days.

"Hello," said a deep voice, making her startle slightly. The man's eyes were open, staring up at her with an expression of intense curiosity.

"Hi," she replied, unable to think of anything else to say.

He tilted his head slightly looking at her through his thick black lashes. He had such strange coloured eyes, such a pale shade of bluish-greyish that it almost seemed to be silver, flecked with even paler diamond-like spots, edged in near-black. "Such a fragile little porcelain doll, yet with such strength she holds him."

Jenny frowned lightly. "Pardon?" she queried.

"'Tyger, Tyger, burning bright/In the forests of the night/What immortal hand or eye/Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?'" Whiskey Two Lambda recited softly, his low baritone voice rumbling from the very depths of his chest. His eerie silver-blue eyes shifted to look at Jenny, and it felt almost as if his strange gaze was boring straight through her, gazing right into the heart of her, reading the thoughts right off the back off her skull. "A fearsome beast be the tiger, armed in tooth and claw, but she twists the sinews of his heart and turns the beast's snarl into contentment instead."

Jenny didn't know how to answer that. It was becoming fast clear to her that this man was certifiable. She moved away from the tall figure strapped onto the cot, feeling unnerved by the combination of his intense gaze and deep, rumbling voice. That first thing he'd said, though, it sure had sounded like a poem of sorts, but she couldn't think of what it was.

A murmur of curiosity refocused her thoughts. In the next room, Cutter, Stephen, Danny, and Becker were looking over the weapons that had been confiscated from Whiskey. Some of it certainly was from the future, and the captain was quite fascinated with the curious-looking pistols. There were only two guns, though; the rest were all knives and blades of varying lengths and sizes. Lying on the edge of the table was a long, retractable metal rod that was barely as thick as her little finger, tapered to a fine point on one end, the slim handle wrapped in leather. None of them were quite sure as to its purpose until Cutter picked it up again, studying it closely. With an expression of curiosity on his face, he extended his arm and lightly touched the tapered end of the rod to Danny's shoulder. There was a sparking flash of bright blue light and a loud _zzzrack_ sound; the copper was taken off his feet with a strangled cry, landing on his back halfway across the room with a tremendous crash. For an instant, Cutter only stared with wide eyes, then burst out laughing.

"Nick!" Jenny scolded angrily as she swatted his shoulder. "It's not funny!"

"Y-yes—yes, it is," he chortled back between laughs.

Danny was still lying on the floor, still twitching involuntarily from the violent, powerful burst of electricity that the rod—which was in reality a tool often used in the Complex for subduing the hybrids—had discharged into his body. They didn't know it, but the power had actually been put on its lowest setting, otherwise the copper might have turned out much worse. "You…bastard," he spat through clenched teeth.

Scowling, Jenny snatched the electric rod from Cutter's had, still glowering at him even though an inner part of her melted hearing him laugh again. "Oh, hush it, you," she admonished the professor. "Danny, are you alright?"

"Fine," he ground out. Still trembling slightly, he managed to reach up, grasp the edge of the table, and pull himself shakily to his feet; he had to lean up against the table for support. "I…hate you," he hissed at a still-grinning Cutter, which only made the Scotsman laugh harder. Even Stephen and Becker were fighting down grins as well, and only the captain managed to muffle his snickers. Stephen was only barely managing to pass off his laughter as a coughing fit. "Sod off, the both of you. Just sod the hell off," Danny said through gritted teeth as he glared at the other two men.

Whilst the rest of the team was finding amusement in playing with the futuristic weaponry, in the next room, Abby was grim-faced and serious, standing over the cot of Whiskey Two Lambda. "Wake up," she said sharply, rapping her knuckles on the metal bedrails.

"What makes you think I sleep?" Amazingly long, thick black lashes parted to reveal his unnatural eyes, so pale they almost seemed colourless, a shade of grey-blue that was closer to silver. A part of her wondered if his eyes had always been that strange colour or if it was a result whatever genetic altercation that'd been done to him. He didn't need to seem to blink as often as normal people, and his unblinking gaze was so intense it felt as if he was looking clean through her, reading her thoughts right off the back of her skull. "She seeks something. A piece of her puzzle what has been lost. But that still begs the question...why does the little bird come twittering to the serpent in its cage?" he asked.

Abby didn't ask how he could have known why she was there. "You were a prisoner in the Complex?" she demanded.

"The spider of doors ordered my assembly, scattered pieces brought together within the web, two by two in hands of blue."

She hadn't the foggiest idea what any of that meant, but considering that she hadn't heard an outright 'no', she took that for agreement. "Do you know anyone named Connor Temple?" she queried at last. Cutter didn't know what had happened to the student, but perhaps this strange man could give her some kind of clue, any shred of information.

He shook his head slowly. His hair was riotously curly, spreading across the pale pillowcase like an inky black halo. "I do not know anyone of the name. I am Whiskey Two Lambda, no less." Suddenly his whole body shuddered, a tremor travelling through his tall frame like a flick travelling down a length of rope. His lips formed a wide smile, all his teeth even and glittering white. "They have come. The Manticore cannot function without all its parts. They come to collect that what has been lost."

"What are you talking about?" Abby demanded. She was already in a foul mood after losing Connor's ring, and she had no patience for this man's strange riddling talk. "Who's coming?"

He smiled a little wider. "My brothers and sisters."

Suddenly, the ARC was plunged into abrupt, total darkness.


	8. Blackout

Screams of alarm and surprise echoed faintly up the corridors from elsewhere in the ARC. Instinct kicked in, and in an instant, Cutter was on his feet, the subjugation rod clasped in in his fist. That had been another favourite torment of the scientists in the Complex: they would shove a handful of hybrids into a blackout room with nocturnal predators and turn off every light to test their new nocturnal vision. He blinked several times, his vision rapidly adjusting to the new spectrum he now saw. If anyone were to shine a light on his face, his pupils would reflect the light with a metallic green-silver-orange sheen, a result of the tapetum—a film of reflective tissue in the eye that reflected all available light and allowed animals to see in the dark. He could see that all the others in the room had gone rigid. "Nobody move," he ordered sharply.

"Nick?" Jenny's voice was tremulous with fear, and he could see how wide her eyes had gotten.

"It'll be alright, love. Trust me." A torch clicked on, and he hissed through his teeth, turning his gaze away. "Put that damn thing down!" he hissed. "I can't see a bloody thing with that light."

"And _we_ can't see a bloody thing without it," Danny replied.

He had to grit his teeth in irritation. He and this copper would have to hash things out between them quite soon. "You lot stay here in this room. Close the door after me, and do not leave until I come back or until the power comes back on. Alright?" he said. It was too dark for Jenny to see his expression, so he extended a hand to lightly grasp her hand; she jumped in shock, then grasped his fingers tight.

"Alright. Be careful," she murmured back, squeezing his hands again before letting go.

Cutter adjusted his grip on the handle of the rod and silently pulled open the door, slipping into the corridor. It was completely dark; to any human, they would be utterly blind. But he had the night vision of, well, a cat. He paused a moment, taking a deep breath through his nose and allowing his senses to expand, _really_ expand. The hyper-senses of a hybrid were one of the things that he was rather grateful to have. Humans didn't have any good senses, not really. He could track an individual scent for miles and tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi at twenty paces. He could hear sounds on pitches above and below human perception and could pinpoint a sneeze in a crowd. He could see in the dark, but he could also see in infrared and at great distance with clarity. Even his sense of touch was heightened. Even when he closed off his senses, he felt things with near ten times the intensity of a human; if he so wished, he could feel his way through the dark, blindfolded, by detecting changes in air pressure on his skin.

It was like stepping into another world. He shivered, skin crawling for a moment as he took a second to ground himself. The overall _clean_ scent of the place, a cocktail of antiseptic, floor cleaner, latex, and disinfectant, nearly gagged him, overlain with the stink of various body odours—perfume, sweat, cologne, aftershave, soap, and pheromones. He could hear various voices, some distant, some nearby, calling out in confusion. He could faintly hear the sound of Lester shouting for answers _right bloody now!_ His skin crawled with awareness, now able to detect the faintest shift in the air around him.

The sound of Abby's voice reached his ears: "What the hell is going on? Who's coming here?"

The low, velvety baritone of Whiskey Two Lambda answered. "He has already said. The Manticore cannot function without all its parts. They come to retrieve their brother."

Cutter hissed and stalked down the corridor, pushing open the doors and sliding in. He saw Abby tense, holding a scalpel snatched up from one of the medical trays. "Who's there?" she hissed out, gripping the small blade tightly.

"It be the tiger, little bird," said Whiskey.

"It's me, Abby," Cutter replied quietly, and she lowered the scalpel as he approached her. Cutter looked down at the tall, pale form of the other man strapped to the cot. Whiskey Two Lambda was staring right back at him, meeting his eyes even in the dark. "Who is coming here?" he demanded.

Whiskey grinned wide. "Those bound in silver cord cannot be unbound."

Cutter heard only the faintest whisper of fabric and barely had time to turn around before a dark shape swung down from the ceiling through a hole in the paneling. A pair of boots slammed into his chest, throwing him backwards; his back met the wall with enough force to put a hole through the plaster. He slumped to the floor, unable to breathe. It felt as if a sledgehammer had been taken to his chest. Abby let out a startled yelp, but as she was still unable to see anything, she could only stand there, paralysed in fear. A man dropped from the ceiling, landing on his toes with hardly a sound at all. He was tall but slender as a beanpole, dressed in the same all-black ensemble as Whiskey Two Lambda, with a wild mess of dark hair that stood up everywhere and dark eyes; the pupils of his eyes shone with a metallic orange-green-silver sheen, which meant he could see in the dark just as well as Cutter could. He drew a long silver knife and lashed out at the cot; the restraints were severed clean. Another dropped from the ceiling—a slender woman with a short cap of curls—and cut through the restraints on the other side of the cot.

"Cutter, what's happening?" Abby asked, clearly distressed at being unable to see anything but still able to hear things.

"Don't move," he rasped out as Whiskey rolled off the cot onto his feet. Cutter braced both hands on the wall and shoved back to his feet, facing the three members of the Deadly Dozen. Two of them were armed—scratch that, all three were. Whiskey Two Lambda had picked up the subjugation rod that Cutter had dropped, the slender rod whining softly as it powered up.

The curly-haired woman pointed a blade at him. "Take your own advice," she said softly.

Cutter felt a low growl rasp its way up his throat, the sound low and hoarse. "You're not getting out of here," he warned.

They all smiled at him, a soft, sardonic smile. "We are already inside. We shall get outside quite easily."

"That's where you're wrong," he answered, staring at the three of them, trying to decide which would be best to take out first. "You'll find that a lot of things are easy to get into, but getting back out is often much, much harder." Even as he said it, the lights suddenly came back on. The sudden illumination seared his eyes, tears welling up as he closed his eyes to the harsh glare, disoriented. The other three staggered as well, eyes screwed tight closed against the light. Cutter could only see a blurry, indistinct vision of the people in front of him, but he knew a chance when he saw one. He lunged forward, tackling the dark-eyed man around the middle and throwing him to the floor. The knife swept towards him, and Cutter seized the man's thin wrist, stopping the blade less than an inch from his neck. For such a skinny fellow, he had an unbelievable amount of strength; another result of Helen's toying about with genetics.

Though his focus was mainly on the man he held, Cutter was vaguely aware that Abby had leapt onto the curly-haired woman and was trying to wrest the knife from her hands. The woman drove her elbow into Abby's sternum, making the blonde's breath rush out, then swept her feet out from beneath her, knocking the lizard-girl to the floor. Blinding pain exploded through his shoulder, and Cutter let out a strangled cry of agony, the entire left side of his upper body going numb, a burning tingling feeling coursing beneath his skin. Whiskey Two Lambda braced a foot on Cutter's side and shoved him off the other man, then reached out and touched the end of the metal rod to his hip. The electric shock that exploded through his nerves felt as if someone had poured petrol beneath his skin and then struck a match. Another raspy cry of pain was torn from his throat. The dark-haired man got to his feet, picked up his knife, and the three members of the Dozen strode out of the room.

Fighting against the red haze that crowded around the edges of his vision, Cutter managed to get to his feet. "C'mon, Abby," he growled, pulling the girl to her feet. They ran out of the medic bay and down the corridor towards the central hub, where it seemed that everyone else was running to. Danny, Becker, Stephen, and Jenny came running out of the room he had left them in, all of them well-armed, and followed after him. Cutter hit the door straight-armed, the team bursting into the central hub of the ARC.

One, two, three, four...eight of the Deadly Dozen were in the hub of the ARC, fighting the SAS soldiers and putting them down with fluid ease. Cutter recognised Whiskey Two Lambda, now back in his all-black ensemble and once more armed with his knives, as well as the two that had come to rescue him. The team started to advance, join in the fight, but just as quickly, they all froze as one of the Dozen broke away from the fight to approach them. He wielded a pair of long, curved knives that dripped blood, his pale hands streaked with gore; more droplets of blood splattered his livid-pale face. His eyes were flat and empty, preternaturally bright with the fever of battle. The professor felt the heated blood-rage coursing through his veins go cold as if someone had just poured ice water into him. He swore that his heart actually stopped for a moment. It was the one thing that he had prayed to every deity didn't happen, the one thing that he always dreaded and feared.

Connor Temple had been made into one of the Deadly Dozen.

* * *

Echo stood there staring at them, at the tiger and his porcelain doll, at the fragile little humans that stood with it, fissures spreading through his mind, his fragile clarity unravelling beneath the strain. The wisp of Before, once been like smoke and air, was now tangible, a steel thread looped tight around his throat like a noose. He could feel all his pieces coming apart, the glue coming unstuck, falling away into nothingness, and he let out a whimper of pain. Suddenly a half-healed wound in his psyche split open, allowing oily, sticky darkness to bubble forth into his mind and swallow up his thoughts.

He tightened his grip on his knives, silver fangs flashing, and strode towards the hybrid. It had to die, this animal caught up in a human skin, before its programming was activated. It was a creation of the spider, and it had to be ended. Even now, though, threads of memory lit through his mind, leaping forth from Before as sparks leapt from a live wire.

 _"I'm flattered, but you're really not my type."_ Blue eyes. Dark blue, the colour of an ocean at storm.

The blades in his hands sang in liquid, crystalline notes, his blood pounding out the tempo in his ears with a thunderous sound, and he danced to the song they wove, tasting burning metal upon his tongue. The hybrid was dodging the blades yet did not strike back, trying to keep Echo away from the tiger's porcelain doll. There were others fighting him as well, though their movements were slow and clumsy, unable to maintain rhythm or keep up with the steps. Still, they moved, fast and feverish and deadly, just like a serpent. Like a raptor.

 _"I said it was beautiful, I didn't say it was friendly."_ Blue eyes again, though these were pale blue, like sword steel. It was the hybrid's voice…but it was not. It was not just the hybrid anymore. It had been something else. Before.

Echo felt a shudder ripple through his body as the fissures in his mind split wider, all the bits and pieces coming unstuck from their places. Cold threads of Before memory seeped through his mind, getting tied up in tangles and knots with the sticky spider thread. He scored a deep wound in one of the others, blood spilling onto his hands, warm-hot and sticky. The blades sang with joy at the taste, silver dripping rubies and fire.

They were shouting at him, though he could not hear over the oily darkness that had overcome his mind, blotting out all thought and reason. He kicked the feet out from beneath one of the others, seized them by the hair, and brought his knife towards the throat that was now exposed, blade thirsty for the taste of fresh blood straight from the carotid.

"No, Connor!"

The two little words sliced though the inky oil-slick black ooze that had swallowed up his thoughts like a blade of purest light. His arm went rigid, the edge of the metal fang hovering just against the man's fragile throat.

 _"I quite like having you around."_ Blue eyes once more, though now they were the perfect colour of a summer sky, of newly-blossomed cornflowers or a sapphire held up to the sunlight. Soft, white-blond hair in a short pixie cut, framing a young face. Arms holding a lizard with wings of not-envy green.

_Abby…_

It had been building since his creation, since the dark, senseless oblivion and the never-ending fires of agony, gradually mounting with all the steadiness of a chain reaction approaching critical mass. Something within him at last cracked, fractured, shattered into a thousand white-hot shards. He did not know if the scream was in his head or on his lips, but it echoed in his ears all the same as he fell into nothingness, shadows swallowing him up.

* * *

"No, Connor!" Abby cried as she saw the blade descend in a glittering silver arc towards Stephen's exposed throat.

He froze, the edge of the blade pressed against the tracker's throat, his eyes wide and vacant. They all stared, watching him with baited breath, afraid to move lest he kill Stephen with a single twitch of the wrist. But then his hand went slack, the knife slipping from his grasp. His eyes rolled back in his head, his back arched, and a scream unlike anything they'd ever heard spilled from his lips as he fell to the ground and lay there unmoving.

"Connor!" Abby scrambled forward despite the hands that tried to pull her back. She fell to her knees beside the still form of her flatmate without hesitation or fear, lifting his head into her lap. His skin felt cold and clammy to the touch, his pulse weak and fluttery. Tears ran down her face, dripping onto his cool skin. He was breathing in fast, shallow little pants, fingers twitching, eyes rolling behind his closed lids. She ran her hand over his black hair, torn between crying and laughing, her joy at seeing him alive clashing with her fear for him. She didn't even realise that she was saying his name like a mantra, half-sobbing as she lightly ran her hand over his chest and shoulders. She raised her gaze to Cutter. "What happened to him?" she hiccupped out weakly.

The professor was still at a loss, staring at the form of his student with a mixture of sorrow and disbelief. His fingers were still tipped in his sharp felid claws, the liquid heat of adrenalin still coursing through his blood, and he couldn't quite manage to wind down fully. The chemical-blood-death scent of the Deadly Dozen was thick in the air; his inner animal was snarling and roaring in fury at it. "I don't know." He shook his head again, unable to tear his gaze away from Connor. "I don't know."

The low-pitched whine of an electrical charge building reached his ears, and he whirled on heel, spinning around but then freezing dead in place. The other members of the Deadly Dozen stood about three metres away, all dressed head-to-toe in identical sleek black outfits, surrounded by the bodies of the SAS. Whether the soldiers were unconscious or dead, he didn't know. Cutter blinked in shock when he realised that there were eleven of them now—he had only thought there were eight, but the missing four had seemingly come crawling out the woodwork to join. There were six women and five men, not counting Connor, with matching blank, unreadable expressions. They were holding the same strange-looking guns that had been found on Whiskey Two Lambda, pointed straight at the team. Four of them were pointing their weapons at Cutter, two were pointing at Abby, and the others had their aim levelled at the rest of the team, who still stood frozen behind him.

For a moment, everyone stood there just staring at each other, the tension between them nearly tangible in the air. "Please," Abby whispered, her voice uncharacteristically weak and tremulous. She was clutching Connor like the pale-faced young man was the only thing anchoring her to the surface of the world, tears staining her cheeks. "Please don't do this."

"Release him," said a young woman amidst the Dozen. Her features were eerily alike to Connor's, from her short black hair and large dark eyes, to her lily-pale complexion and lean, wiry frame. Cutter swallowed hard as he realised they had to be siblings; there was no other way to explain it. The young woman had her weapon pointed directly at Abby.

The petite blond shook her head slowly, emphatically, her blue gaze unmoving from the dark-haired woman's. "No. I won't let you take him from me."

"Little bird cannot stop the serpent by twittering," the woman replied.

"Please. You don't have to do this," Abby insisted quietly. "We don't want to hurt you. He—" She laid her hand on Connor's chest, over his heart. "—is our friend. We care about him. We'd never hurt him; we want to help him. You could help us do that. We don't have to fight, please." Her voice broke slightly, tears welling up anew in her eyes.

Whiskey Two Lambda stood just behind the dark-haired woman, and his silvery blue-grey eyes shifted to her face, head tilted slightly like a puzzled animal. "Little bird," he said softly. "He is the piece she lost and cannot sing without, the half what makes her whole."

Understanding finally washed over her, and Abby nodded. "Yes."

He said nothing else, but there was a strange shift in the air, a feeling of silent _communication_ passing between the members of the Dozen. The stillness of the air was only broken by the soft sound of their breathing. Finally, the eleven black-clad people lowered their weapons to their sides in a unified motion. The dark-haired woman stepped forward. "I am Quebec Sixteen Rho," she said; she even had the same thick Northern accent that Connor had. She pointed to the unconscious student. "He is Echo Thirteen Omega."

Abby shook her head. "He's Connor Temple." Her gaze went back down to Connor, stroking his hair possessively once more. Cutter could just hear her near-inaudible whisper of, "He's _my_ Connor."

"Do you know what happened to him?" asked Stephen, lightly touching the tiny wound on his throat where Connor's blade had only just nicked his skin.

A slightly-stocky woman with soft brown eyes and cinnamon-coloured hair answered him. "He has come undone. The pieces have all come apart."

Cutter knew from talking with Whiskey Two Lambda that the Dozen had a very peculiar way of speaking; he was quite certain that they were all certifiable, too. "Do you mean his programming? The behavioural conditioning?" he asked. From what little information he'd gleaned from scientists in the Complex, all memebers of the Dozen had layers upon layers of mental 'programming' laid in their brains, behavioural conditioning that could be triggered to turn them into mindless killing machines. Of course, Helen had never gotten around to finishing them, so a good bit of their programming had been left unfinished.

"Yes...and no," replied the woman, tilting her head slightly with a puzzled look in her eyes, as if she was looking at something only she could see. "He severed the strings as to not be a marionette, but all his other pieces broke, too. Fractured. Remembered the things what came Before," she said softly, almost reverently, and he could hear the capital letter attached to the word.

Jenny slowly edged forward, reaching out to wrap one hand around Cutter's arm, squeezing tight. "What does that mean?" she asked softly.

Cutter ran the words over in his mind, thoughts running a marathon through his head. "Remember I told you that the scientists in the Complex did things to the Dozen's brains? Things to remove their memories, brainwash them?" he asked, staring into empty air as his thoughts raced. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "I think what she's saying is that Connor somehow managed to...I dunno, override his programming and started to remember who he really was."

"So what's wrong with him?" Abby asked, reiterating Stephen's question.

The professor pushed a hand back through his hair, raking it out of his face. "He...shorted out," he answered reluctantly. "I think his behavioural conditioning is fighting against his memories, and it caused him to..." He gestured helplessly to the student, lying still on the floor.

Letting out a soft sob, Abby ran her hand over Connor's dark hair once more, and she raised her eyes to the other members of the Dozen. "Can you help him?"

Quebec Sixteen Rho stepped forward and crouched on her heels beside Abby and the still form of Connor. Abby was struck once more by how alike they looked, and she knew that this had to be Connor's sister, or some other relative of his. "We cannot repair what has been broken. Only he can put the pieces back where they go because they are his. It is not their place to fix what is not their own," she said, her words clear and precise. The whole team understood that response—Connor had to fix his mind by himself; the rest of the Dozen couldn't do it for him because it was his mind and not theirs. "But," she continued, "Echo is our brother, and he cannot be left alone. He will not be harmed?"

Abby shook her head emphatically. She had spent a year trying to find her flatmate, and she'd be damned if she let anything happen to him now.

"Then we will stay. Those bound in silver cord cannot be unbound. The Manticore cannot function without its parts, so we will protect him until he puts all the pieces back where they belong," said Quebec, but then she drew her silver knife in the blink of an eye, placed the deadly tip under Abby's chin, and lifted the young woman's blue eyes to her own liquid black ones. "If the Echo dissolves and no longer reverberates, then the little bird will be unmade by the serpents before she can fly away," she cautioned.

She understood that as well—if Connor died after she had promised to take care of him, then the Dozen would kill her for it. And she didn't doubt that they would. Not one little bit. Abby raised her chin defiantly. "So be it," she answered.

* * *

Trapped inside the feverish darkness of his own unraveled sanity, amidst the broken pieces of his mind, Connor Temple, Subject Echo Thirteen Omega, dreamed...


	9. Beauty and Scattered Pieces

"Cutter's out of his mind. What the hell's he thinking, lettin' that lot in here?" Danny hissed as he watched the security monitors; the screen he gazed at was showing a live feed of the medic room. Connor had been taken there to be evaluated, so had Becker to get his wound stitched up. Connor, in his odd, hypnotised state, had opened a deep laceration in the captain's side. It was a miracle that he hadn't been gutted. The other members of the Dozen were all there being looked over, though not a one of them had so much as a stubbed toe. It seemed that Cutter had been telling the truth—they really were made to be living, breathing weapons.

Stephen, however, ignored the copper's angry muttering. He was watching the footage of the fight in the central hub of the ARC, a look of concentration on his face. The professor had told them that the twelve people had not been given the moniker _'Deadly'_ Dozen for no reason, but he was only now really believing it. None of the Dozen looked like fighters. If he met them on the street, he would say they looked fairly unintimidating, honestly. They weren't physically intimidating—they weren't muscular or big in any shape or form. The bloke called Whiskey Two Lambda was tall, sure, so were a few others, but they were also thin as beanpoles and looked as if a strong wind might knock them down. The women, for the most part, were all small and petite, slim little things that didn't look like they could swat a fly.

Yet, as he watched the footage, he silently vowed that he would never make assumptions based on appearance ever again. These twelve people that didn't look at all intimidating were cutting down some of the most highly-trained soldiers as if they were no more than untrained kids on the street, not even breaking a sweat. The Dozen didn't seem to ever really use guns. They all had a set of pistols, yeah, but they didn't use them. They liked their knives better, it seemed. They wielded the deadly blades with a smooth, skillful precision that took years of practice to achieve. Stephen watched as they spun and whirled and slashed, moving in perfect synchronicity with each other, an almost ballet-like flow of movement. He wasn't one for poetry; he wasn't one for words at all. He didn't have an eye for scenery or whatever else people found to be beautiful. Stephen had a very different idea of what was beautiful. Women were one thing, of course. He liked their curves and hollows and all the subtle angles about them that made them so pleasant to look at and touch. That wasn't too odd, of course. But he also thought that his guns were beautiful, some of them. He liked how all their little parts fitted into each other and interacted so perfectly, graceful proportions and smooth metal. His very favourite gun, his rifle, Vera—nobody else knew that he named his guns, and he would keep it that way—was particularly beautiful, though he knew he was alone in that.

And the Deadly Dozen were unspeakably beautiful. They were practically a work of bloody art. 'Beautiful' wasn't a word he'd ever use to describe another bloke; he didn't lean that way in the least. But what he felt wasn't anything like physical attraction. The Dozen were beautiful in the way that Vera was beautiful. They were weapons, guns made up of muscle and bone instead of steel and lead, flowing through the violence of the fight the way water flowed around rocks in a stream. Stephen, looking past the fact that they were fighting ARC security, had to admire the way they all moved so perfectly together. He knew he was a good fighter—he'd won more than his fair share of fistfights and bar brawls—but the graceful force they had made him positively breathless. He wondered if perhaps they would be willing to teach him how to blur into the fight until he became the fight the way that they did.

His eyes gravitated to Connor, following the errant young student through the brawl. He had always seen Connor as a clumsy, hopeless little geek, but he would still consider the young man to be his friend, one of the few he could boast of. Just like the rest of the Dozen, Connor moved like nothing else Stephen had ever seen before, blades flashing in hand, never once missing a step or losing balance. Stephen fast-forwarded to where Connor had fought him and the rest of the team. Before his disappearance, the tracker could have easily wiped the floor with Connor, yet he fought him, Becker, Danny, and Cutter all at one time with ease. It was amazing.

"Stephen!"

The raised voice made him jump slightly in his seat, and he turned to see Jenny standing not far behind him, watching him expectantly. "What?" he asked.

"That's the fourth time I said your name," she answered with eyebrows raised, and she walked closer to the table, leaning at the waist to look at the video he'd been watching. Something in her face shifted as she took in the sight of the recording, though he couldn't quite recognise what it was. "Unbelievable," she said in a low murmur. "They're all so…young, and yet…." Her voice trailed off as she shook her head slowly.

"I know," Stephen agreed, his voice just as quiet, then turned his gaze to her. "Was there something you wanted?"

Jenny nodded and straightened up. "Yes. Lester is laying down some ground rules with the Dozen, wants the team there to hear," she answered. "C'mon."

He turned off the laptop and stood up, following her down the hall to Med. The soldiers that had all been taken out in the fight had been sent to the hospital already. Some thirty-odd men had been put out of action by the Dozen, and four had been killed. Now Becker was the only soldier in there; Connor had near about gutted the captain with his knife, and only the protective vest of Kevlar he wore had prevented the blade from going fatally deep. The other eleven members of the Dozen were sitting quite calmly and patiently—not looking at all as if they'd just taken out half of the security force of a top-secret government facility—and allowing the medics to take their vitals and prod at them curiously. Connor himself was laid up in one of the cots; Abby, somehow, had managed to manoeuver herself up onto the cot beside him. Danny lurked in the corner, his expression stormy as he eyed the Dozen warily; Sarah stood close to him, appearing just as anxious around the eleven people. Cutter leaned against the wall, his arm resting around Jenny's waist as she stood beside him. His hand was bandaged from where he had turned aside one of Connor's blades with his bare hands.

Lester stood in the midst of it all, looking cool and unmovable. "Seeing as how Mr. Temple is currently incapacitated—" His gaze flicked briefly to the prone form of the student. "—and the rest of his…" He paused, seeming to grope for the proper word to describe the Deadly Dozen. "…team refuses to leave him alone and unprotected, it would seem that you lot are now under the protection of the ARC. This means that there will have to be some new rules to be adhered to. You will relinquish all your weapons to Captain Becker and explain what they are and how they're used. You will answer all questions put to you, and you will do so truthfully. You will tell us everything you know about this Complex, the genetic experiments, and yourselves. None of you are to go anywhere in this building without supervision," he said, addressing the black-clad people; they all sat and watched him with identical, unblinking stares. Their faces were all carefully blank. If they felt any particular way about Lester's proclamation, damned if anyone else could see it on their faces. "If I even _suspect_ that there is any foul play or intent to cause this operation or its operatives any harm, you will be incarcerated indefinitely," he said firmly. "Is that understood?"

"Understood," all eleven replied in perfect unison.

He turned to look at the team. "And you lot are to keep a fair eye upon them. The good professor has told us that Helen Cutter has a regiment of…hybrids, I do believe was the word, at her command. Is this true?"

The curly-haired woman that had helped rescue Whiskey—she had identified herself as Sierra Eighteen Zeta—nodded, making her copper-coloured ringlets bounce about her ears. "They are the hounds of hell, her dogs of war, tied up in leashes of wire and code," she murmured quietly.

"She has the canine hybrids implanted with the impulse regulator chip; they're fully under her control," Cutter translated, noticing the blank looks of confusion all around the room. A lot of what the Dozen said was confusing and convoluted, but he'd come to realise that what sounded like nonsense was actually some sort of metaphor or allusion to what they were trying to say. The dogs of war were the canine hybrids, and the leashes of wire and code were actually the impulse regulator chips that controlled the hybrids' brains. Granted, there was some of it he couldn't figure out, but most of what they said did make an odd sort of sense. Of course, that could just mean that _he_ was certifiable as them.

"Now, Professor Cutter," said Lester.

 _Here it comes,_ he thought in silent dread, though he didn't let it show. "What?"

"I believe that there are a few other of these…hybrids within the city. Ones that are, more or less, under _your_ command. Is that true?" asked the bureaucrat silkily.

Cutter tightened his arm around Jenny's waist, drawing her in a little closer to his side; she leant back into him almost imperceptibly, but even that was enough. "Yeah," he replied.

"If Helen does have these…dogs of war…under her control, not to mention those vapid clones of hers, then it seems to me that she has sufficient enough forces to possibly mount an attack upon the ARC," said Lester in that same damnably level tone of voice. "It would be wise, then, to bring these other hybrids in, would it not? A precautionary measure, of course, a way to perhaps defend ourselves should Helen decide to attack?"

Dread dropped into the pit of his stomach like a ten-tonne weight. Cutter dug his fingers into the soft skin at Jenny's waist almost compulsively, then loosened his grip even though her fingers didn't relax their iron-tight hold on his wrist. Had he been human, her grip would have bruised him. He forcibly swallowed past the lump of cotton in his throat. "That…would not be too wise," he answered at last, and Lester's eyebrows rose in silent query. "The other felids, they aren't like me. I managed to keep it together better than the rest, but they…they don't have quite as good a handle on their more predatory instincts. Some of them, they're more animal than man," he said softly. "Bringing them here would not be the wisest suggestion, not unless you've got somewhere separate from everything else to keep them." He knew that having the rest of the hybrids brought to the ARC would result in blood and violence—it was what they were built for, after all. Whilst he saw the logic in Lester's argument, he still knew that it wouldn't turn out quite so well. In his mind's eye, he remembered Gavin kneeling over Jenny, tearing her skirt, about to tear her apart in more ways than one. If he hadn't shown up when he had, Cutter had no doubt that Gavin would have raped her, tortured her, and killed her—though not necessarily in that order. As it was, he still felt the temptation to tear that sorry bastard apart. If they were brought to the ARC, he knew that things would get messy right quick.

"That can be arranged," Lester answered smoothly. "I want them brought in, as soon as all possible."

 _You have no idea what you're asking for,_ Cutter thought. "Alright," he said reluctantly. Jenny turned her head to look at him with anxiety in her eyes; he squeezed her hip again, this time in comfort. "I want the Dozen to come with me."

Lester froze mid-step on his way out the door, and his gaze snapped back to him. "What?" he said icily.

"Well, we are missing half of security. I told you that the hybrids will follow me, and that's still true, but they also spent a year or more in the Complex, a place not too different from the ARC. If they freak out about coming here, it'll be hell trying to keep them in line. You've seen how we fight," he said. Before the suited man could say anything, he turned to look at the eleven black-clad people. A part of him was still struck by how _young_ they looked. Some of them hardly looked of age to be in college. He looked at Quebec Sixteen Rho, the small, petite little thing that looked so alike Connor. "You called him Echo," he said, gesturing to the still form of Connor himself, and she nodded. "I know him as Connor. Before the Complex, before I was a hybrid and before he was what he is now, he and I worked together. I was his teacher, and he was my student. I trust him with my life. Can I trust you?"

She stood up; she was so short that the top of her head barely cleared his chin. "Echo is my brother. We are bound in blood as well as silver cord. Without him, the puppets would still dance upon strings of spidersilk, darkness swallowing up their conscious." Her dark eyes moved up to his face. "Should the animals in human skin slip their lead, the serpent will be there."

"Thank you." Glancing up at the others, Cutter sighed. "Well...no time like the present. Let's get this over with."

* * *

Echo Thirteen Omega...or was he Connor Temple?...had lost his mind. Some little part of him was very vaguely aware that he had gone crazy. His sanity, a fragile cloth that had taken months to weave, had come unravelled, all his threads getting tangled up in spiderweb and wires. All the connections he spent so much time building had all collapsed, severing ties and blurring distinctions between thought and reality, between word and memory.

He had been unmade.

The endless screams of the silent dead and vile howling tore at his insides, carving him all up into ribbons. All his pieces had been thrown about and scattered, thrown into the dirt, swallowed up by the sticky darkness. There were so many pieces that weren't his own, ones that did not belong and had been shoved in regardless. He could not feel the others; the silver cord, whilst not severed, had been thinned away to only the finest cobwebby filament. He was alone.

He knew that he had to rebuild, to somehow put all the pieces back together, his or not, if he ever wanted to survive...but how? There was all so much of it, and everything was in tangles. The silent screaming never stopped, and he kept tasting the blood in his mouth. So much blood. Those people, the ones full of the sticky, oily darkness, they were swimming in blood, drowning in it, yet it never touched them, never stained. He was broken. Sad, pathetic, broken little toy, cast aside.

_Connor..._

He was not Connor. He was Echo Thirteen...wasn't he? He didn't know anymore. But he could still hear that voice, like the softest brush of velvet against his bare skin, like the scent of lilac and the colour of sunlight and moonstone. It was barely audible above the mournful wail of the silent dead, the snarling roar of animals in human skin that clawed at their restraints, yet he could still hear it. Vaguely, he was aware of a weight resting upon his shoulder, though the sensation was muffled, as if he felt it through many layers of thick blankets or his entire body was quite thoroughly numb. He felt detached, and all he could feel was a ghost-echo of sensation. He would not be able to reattach unless he put all his pieces back together.

_You have to come back to us. To me._

The words shimmered across the oily darkness, untouched by the filth, and he could taste the indigo flavour of them on his tongue. Strange. He wondered how they managed to remain whole and didn't become all fractured and disjointed as everything else did within this madhouse that he called his own mind. The words bid him to return...but how? He didn't know how to put himself back together. Everything was broken.

_I know you can hear me, damn it. You have to come back._

He felt his own thoughts turn yellow and scaly in frustration as well as desperation. Did the voice not understand that he could not return? He was broken, shattered. Blood didn't come out of silk, shattered glass could not be made whole. Theoretically speaking, he knew how to rebuild many things; the key was to start from the core piece and build outward from it...except that he had no core piece. The spider of doors had ripped him apart and put him back together so many times that he no longer knew what was his and what was not, and he could not recognise half of his own pieces, they had been mangled and twisted about so. It was maddening. And he was already quite mad anyways, so...

Again, the faintest ghostly pressure upon his chest this time, just above his heart, and Connor...Echo?...felt the faintest stirrings of something. There was something new. A piece that had not been there before. A thing-that-was-more-than-a-thing. It was a thread. Not a sticky, ensnaring bit of spidersilk or the gleaming filament of silver that bound him to the Manticore, but something else. It was delicate and thin, slender as a hair. It was knotted somewhere beneath his left ribs, and though he could not feel where it ended, he believed that the opposite end was knotted within the corresponding quadrant of another's frame. Another with the eyes that looked like new cornflowers or lapis lazuli held up to sunshine and the short white-blond hair that had no sense of boundary and oft went wherever it so wished. _Abby. Her name is Abby..._ This new thread was strong. Delicate, yes, but strong. And if it were to be snapped, he had this rather disturbing notion that he would then begin to bleed internally.

 _Because I love her._ The thought came from nowhere, yet it burst with fractures of light in gorgeous catherine-wheels of sparks and colour. Abby...yes, he loved her. The lizard-girl that he knew to be sweet beneath the bones, a brilliant flare of colour in a dull world. She was delicate as spun glass even though she was crafted of steel, sharp and distant and soft and caring. He wasn't sure why he loved her. There was no way to quantify the emotion, no way to define it or describe it. But it was his own. It was a piece that was all his own, untouched and undespoiled by the spider, not marked by the fire-agony inflicted upon him by the puppets with cold hands. It didn't belong to the Complex. It didn't belong to the Manticore. It didn't belong to the spider of doors. It was his own. He didn't know if he was Echo or Connor or neither, but he knew that his love for Abby was all his own. It was unique. Nobody in all the world had ever loved her precisely the way that he did, didn't feel exactly the way he did about her.

Start with the core piece. Build outward from it.

He had fractured because he had tried to rebuild himself without a proper core. That wouldn't work. All the pieces shoved together helter-skelter would do nothing but rupture, which they had. So, ravaged by the howls of the silent dead, tasting the blood he spilt within his mouth, feeling his own insanity clawing at him, he began to reassemble himself. No spider of doors would do it this time. He would do it himself. This time, he used that treasured little piece, his own unique love for Abby, the little bird, the girl who kidnapped helpless dinosaurs and smuggled them to her flat, the warrior woman that once stood face-to-face with a great feline with knives for teeth, and he used that for his core. It didn't matter if she didn't love him back, as he knew she didn't. It didn't matter if she never loved him. That pain would be lost within the thousands of other agonies that already plagued his shattered, broken mind. What was important now was that he rebuilt himself, and that he built upon a core piece that he knew without doubt belonged to him and him alone, even if he wasn't sure who he was.

There were so many other pieces that didn't belong to him at all.

* * *

Abby stayed with her head on Connor's shoulder, after the others had left, for she didn't know how long. She had her eyes closed, snuggled down close beside him, feeling the coolness of his skin against hers, inhaling the familiar scent of him; unconsciously, she began breathing in time with him, matching him inhale for exhale. From the way that the other medics in the room moved and spoke softly, she knew they thought she was asleep. She didn't bother to let them know otherwise. If they thought she was asleep then she would be undisturbed.

 _Connor,_ she thought to herself. _You have to come back to us. To me._ She wasn't sure that she could live without him, not after this. To have her hopes built up only to have the rug yanked from under her feet might drive her bloody crackers. _I know you can hear me, damn it. You have to come back._

Maybe she really was going insane. A smile pulled at her lips. Well, if she was, then chances were that she and the Dozen would get on like a house on fire then. They were all certifiable. If she was crazy, maybe she would be able to understand them better. Swallowing hard past the lump of cotton in her throat, she shifted slightly and instead laid her head on Connor's chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. And she felt something hard beneath the black shirt he wore. Curious, she slipped her fingers into the collar of his shirt, felt a slim metal chain with her fingertips, and pulled it free. She couldn't believe it.

Her ring—Connor's ring—dangled from the chain, the very same chain that she had lost only two days before. He must've somehow found it after she lost it in the warehouse. Abby laid her head back on his chest, idly playing with the familiar ring, rolling it between her fingers. He never ceased to amaze her. Now she just wished he would wake up and perhaps be himself again.


	10. Animal Savagery

The sight of the warehouse sent a little shiver up Jenny's backbone; somehow it was even eerier now that it was near dark. Only the faintest light of day still lingered, and it was fading fast. Still, she felt somewhat better with a gun in her hands. Cutter had given them tranquilisers with an upped amount of the drug. Stephen feared it to be fatal, but the professor assured him that it would barely knock out the hybrids if things turned eventful. Becker's men—the ones still standing—surrounded the building. The captain himself was there, despite a medic's warning that he wasn't fit for work yet, still wounded. The Deadly Dozen, sans Connor, followed just behind them, holding the long, slender subjugation rods in their hands; strange, how such a harmless-looking object could cause so much pain.

"Stay close," said Cutter softly, his voice nearly inaudible. But she could just hear him, and she edged a little nearer to him. Then he raised his voice slightly, looking at the others. "Look, when we go in there, you let me handle it. I know you think that you'll need to protect me, but unless I give the word, you let me take care of it. Understood? This is important," he said. And this _was_ important. The felids operated like a pride of wild cats, and his position as head of the pride had been earned by proving his worth to every other contender. They were savage creatures, for the most part, and those animal instincts wouldn't allow for a weak leader. He had become leader through blood and violence and pain. If he wanted to keep his place as head of the pride—and therefore maintain his authority over the hybrids—then the others couldn't help. He had to keep them in order by himself.

"Will things get eventful when we go in there?" asked Becker. If the captain was in pain, he was doing a fair job of keeping it hidden; apart from a slight paleness in his skin, he didn't look any different. He held onto his shotgun firmly.

Cutter stared at the building. In the past two weeks, Merinus had been getting more and more ornery, more volatile. He knew that she was trying to take his place, but damned if he'd let her take over. Something in her had gone wrong in the Complex, something had…broken inside her mind. She had gone off her rocker at some point, but she was also the one of the strongest fighters he had. Which meant he couldn't kill her just yet, but he knew that she was going to try and make her little power play. "More than likely, yes," he answered truthfully. "I mean it. When we're inside, don't fire, don't raise your weapons, don't speak, and don't make any sudden movements until I say so."

"And if we do?" Danny wondered, eyebrows going up. "Hypothetically speaking?"

Cutter glanced over at him. "Then you will have your throat torn out by one of the hybrids. Hypothetically speaking," he answered. "C'mon. Let's go."

As they walked into the warehouse, Stephen blinked at the sudden, harsh illumination that greeted them. The overhead lights were glaringly bright and hot, bathing the inside of the warehouse in their unforgiving radiance. With its concrete floors and lack of all furnishing, it somehow reminded him of a gladiator ring or a stadium. There were people up on the walkway above, some fifty-odd in number, dressed in ragged, unwashed clothes; their eyes seemed the only thing alive about them, shining eerily bright in their thin, pale faces. They couldn't seem to be still, shifting and hissing softly; most of them kept their eyes on the eleven black-clad members of the Dozen.

The _clack-clack_ of heels on concrete echoed through the warehouse, and a woman stepped forward, the only other person on the ground floor besides them. It was Merinus. Her thick red hair fanned around her shoulders like a lion's mane, her eyes near glowing green. She wore a formfitting black vest and jeans with heeled leather boots. The scars on her arms and shoulders were clearly visible, and there was a wild flicker in her eyes. "You brought them here?" she asked, flicking her gaze towards the Dozen.

Cutter nodded, stepping forward; thankfully, none of the others followed him, and he advanced until he stood only about ten paces from Merinus. "I did. The place I work in, it's called the ARC. I told you about it," he said, his voice echoing in the well-built acoustics of the warehouse; the other hybrids were all looking down at him with intense, eerily shiny eyes. "The man who runs it, he has a place for you lot to stay, better than this. It's a government facility with shelter for all of us, protection. We need to be together for when Helen comes back with the canine hybrids. You _know_ she isn't just going to let us go. She _will_ come for us, and we have to stay together if we want any chance of surviving."

Merinus shook her head slowly, her green gaze never straying from his; she didn't need to blink as often as normal people did, it seemed. "I don't think so, Cutter. We're not going to work with those _things—_ " She pointed to the Dozen with one finger. "—and we're for damn sure not going anywhere near any 'government facility.' We're not going anywhere with you. I'm going to find that bitch and kill her myself, her and her dogs."

"You can't do that, Merinus. Helen's too strong. With all the canine hybrids and those clones, she'll have you torn apart before you get anywhere near her," Cutter answered. She was going to fight him. He knew it for a fact now. And he had this feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was probably going to have to kill her. They had come to a fork in the road. One path was Merinus's—she would try to go at Helen headfirst and get all of the hybrids either killed or recaptured—and the other was Cutter's—he would take them back to the ARC where they could regroup and hopefully survive.

"Then you know what's going to happen," she said.

"It doesn't have to," he replied.

"It does."

She moved so fast it was hardly visible to the humans watching and practically flew at Cutter. They moved faster than any human being could, almost a blur of movement, fast and agile, their claws extended like sharp hooks. It wasn't like the Dozen moved, with all the elegant grace of a dance flowing across the stage; this was raw animal strength and power. Every time they managed to land a blow against each other, the sheer force of it made the human audience wince. It was almost as if a giant was swinging a sledgehammer, and each sledgehammer was armed with five steel spikes…. Standing there watching, Jenny was clutching her gun so tight her fingers were starting to cramp, and the rest of the team looked just as anxious. It wasn't easy, having to stand there and watch their friend and leader fight. The hybrids, however, watched with rapt attention, hissing eagerly, feeding off the violence and fury of the battle below.

Cutter, on the other hand, had lost himself in the thick red haze that eliminated all thought, allowing the inner animal to surge forward and overtake his human instinct. Rage pulsated within him like a second heartbeat, and his mouth tasted like burning metal and thick, heavy blood. Fire coursed through him as if molten iron had replaced his blood, and his own heartbeat thundered in his ears. Every sense was on hyperdrive, and he felt alive with power. The strength he forcibly held under wraps ran free through him. All his attention was on Merinus, and he could tell that the animal was alive in her as well.

When she came at him again, he jumped back, waiting for her to make some sort of misstep, waiting for her to stagger the way he knew she eventually would. He would not allow this usurper to take his place. This was _his_ pride, not hers. She crashed into him, intending to throw him to the floor, but he was too large and heavy to be knocked over so easily. Instead, on inspiration, he grasped her shoulders, hooked his claws deep into her flesh, and threw himself backwards, using her own momentum to drag her over and slammed her to the floor. Merinus shrieked and bucked, trying to throw him off, but he used his greater weight and superior strength to keep her pinned down. He pinned her arms beneath her, trapped her legs with his, and fisted his hand in her hair, jerking her head back. Her throat was right there, the faint bluish veins pulsing beneath her fair skin. It'd be easy, so easy, just to sink his teeth in and rip the life right out of her with the taste of her blood on his tongue.

But then some little thread of human thought pushed back against the animal. He couldn't kill her. Not yet, anyways. Cutter forcibly wrestled the animal back down, forcing himself to keep that fury in check, to not simply bite down and kill her. He could feel the beast roaring in protest, but he kept himself in check. He placed his forearm across her throat and pressed down, cutting off her air, and he watched as her face began changing colours. "And you'll do as I tell you to unless you've got a goddamned good reason otherwise. Understand that?" he ground out. When he got no response, he pressed a little harder on her throat; she gave a little gurgling noise, turning a peculiar shade of purple, and nodded. He pulled his arm from her throat and rolled to his feet. Merinus turned over on her side, coughing and spluttering, returning to a normal shade of colour. Cutter turned to look up at the hybrids still on the walkway above. "Well? Anyone else have an argument they'd like to run past me?" he asked, voice echoing in the warehouse; there was only silence to answer him. "Alright then."

* * *

He was not Connor Andrew Temple. Or at least, he was not the old Connor. Old-Connor was timid and easily frightened. He couldn't handle a gun and had once shot his little bird full of tranquilisers. He was a bundle of nervous energy and could barely walk straight. He was overlooked by everyone around him, seen as a nuisance, ignored and ridiculed. He was easily forgotten, despite the brilliance that he possessed. He was the one that was shuffled off to the side and left behind. He was the one that wanted nothing more than to love and be loved in return and yet was always pushed away as unworthy of affection.

He was not Echo Thirteen Omega. Echo was the spider's pet, a tool made only to kill whomever she so wished at the snap of her claws. He was a serpent with fangs of steel and hate, all tied in sticky spidersilk as a blood-drenched marionette, dancing as the spider of doors pulled upon his threads. He was a hollow man, his insides all carved out and replaced with sick, oily darkness that swallowed his thoughts and drenched his soul in death. He had no thoughts, no will, no emotions.

He had become something new. When he managed to put all his pieces back together, built around his love for his precious Abby—little bird, lizard girl, warrior woman—he realised that he was not Old-Connor nor was he Echo Thirteen Omega. No. He was all new, though he didn't know exactly _who_ he was just yet. He was not timid or scared of his own shadow. He was not hollow and without thoughts. He was fast and strong and smart, tied to his brothers and sisters with silver cord and bound to his Abby with all-new threads that were delicate-strong. And crazy. He was quite crazy. He knew that he was. He doubted that he'd ever be not-crazy ever again.

As he fitted together more of his broken, scattered pieces, he knew that he could now function. He could survive with this, even though he was not yet complete. He had to wake, find his brothers and sisters, find the rest of his old team, and warn them of the spider. Everyone had to know of the spider and her treachery. He could hear music now, a soft, shimmering melody that reminded him of the past when he was still a person, and he allowed the soft velvet touch to guide him back to himself.

His eyes opened.

* * *

As Cutter guided the rest of the hybrids into their new accommodations, Stephen stood beside one of the Dozen—the slightly-stocky short woman with cinnamon-coloured hair and warm brown eyes. He tried to remember what her name was. They all had a 'subject title' that consisted of a phonetic letter, a number, and then a Greek letter; seeing how they couldn't remember their proper names, they went by the first part of their subject titles instead. He knew that Connor was Echo Thirteen Omega, and he knew Whiskey Two Lambda and Quebec Sixteen Rho, but it was hard to keep the rest of them straight. The rest of the Dozen had taken up positions around the vehicles, eyes never straying from the hybrids, not missing anything.

True to his word, Lester had a place for the hybrids to stay by the time they got back. There was a bunker, identical to the one that the SAS crashed in between shifts, except this one was in an entirely separate building, connected only by an enclosed breezeway. It was fully equipped with a kitchenette and gym and enough beds for the lot of them. It'd been a living hell coaxing the hybrids into the trucks to bring them back to the ARC. Most of them were more animal than human, and the idea of being in an enclosed space freaked them out worse than a claustrophobic. Only by way of much growling and snarling had Cutter managed to get some of them into a vehicle at all; there was one girl, a young little thing that looked like she ought to still be in secondary school, that'd done her fair share of pushing and shoving as well. The redhead that the professor had gotten into a knockdown-dragout fight with had helped with bullying the other hybrids into the trucks, looking utterly cowed herself.

"I wanna ask you something, if that's alright," Stephen said.

She glanced up at him. Her hair was in a tight braid that hung between her shoulder blades, and her small frame was sheathed in the black uniforms of the Dozen. They all wore the same boots, fingerless gloves, trousers, long-sleeved shirts, and jackets, all of it solid black; the clothes fit to their forms like a second skin, and when the light shone upon them just right, they seemed to shimmer with a faint iridescent sheen, like the glimmer of oil upon water. He wondered what it was made of. "That is satisfactory," she replied.

"When Lester said you and the others all had to give up your weapons, you agreed, just like that. Didn't even cheque at the gate," he said. "Why'd you do it?"

She glanced up at him again. _Foxtrot,_ that was her name, Foxtrot One Kappa. "Because if we truly wanted to damage you, we would not require access to our steel fangs," she answered calmly. "I will give you an example. Within a two-metre radius from where we stand, there are fourteen items that could be construed as weapons. Three of them are sharp, and eleven of them are blunt. As the majority of the possible weapons are blunt, I will continue on that hypothetical pathway. From this position, there are twenty-three ways of combating an assailant with a blunt weapon. Four will kill you, twelve will permanently disable you, and the remaining seven will cause injuries that, whilst being extraordinarily painful, you will recover from in the course of several months."

Stephen stared at her in disbelief, his shock clear on his face. Apparently he was right when he thought of them as living weapons, and it seemed to go further than just having skill in a fight. She had an inherent knowledge of weaponry and finding impromptu weapons when unarmed. "Wow," he mumbled at last.

Foxtrot continued on without even hesitating. "And if I was in a situation that did not have any item that could be construed as a weapon—trapped in an empty room with an assailant, for example, I am more than proficient in numerous forms of hand-to-hand combat. I know every major pressure point in the human body as well as all of the most vulnerable areas of your anatomy and several nerve clusters that, if struck with sufficient force, would leave you or any one of your limbs partially or fully paralysed for several hours. You may have superior height and weight, but I was designed to have far superior strength and agility, as well has extremely heightened endurance and a high pain tolerance as well," she said.

He didn't quite know what to say to that. It seemed that Cutter hadn't been lying when he said that they really were built to be weapons. "That is…quite impressive," he managed to get out at last.

Clasping her hands together behind her, Foxtrot nodded then turned her large, sweet brown eyes up to his face. "You have seen me fight, Mr. Hart, so I believe you already know the answer to your own question. If we had not been equipped with our knives during combat in the ARC the day previous, would the outcome have been any different?"

* * *

Abby had gone home only to feed her pets, shower, and change her clothes before returning to the ARC. Rex had been even more excitable than usual, chittering and squawking excitedly; she wondered if he could smell Connor on her. Cutter and the others hadn't come back yet, and she hoped that everything had gone well with those other hybrids. When she returned to the medical bay, he was exactly as she'd left him, pale and unmoving on the cot. _He almost looks like he's dead,_ she thought, then shivered coldly at the mere thought of having him dead. She'd been tormented enough in the year that he'd been missing with nightmares of him dead or captured or tortured.

She sat on the edge of the cot beside him, reclining on the pillows. His skin felt cooler than hers, as if his body temperature was just a degree or so lower than normal. There was a stray lock of hair hanging in his face, and she gently brushed it back, for a moment just taking in the familiar sight of him. The angles of his face had shifted, become more mature. The dark stubble that shadowed his jaw no longer made him look like a boy that'd forgotten to shave but a young man with physical appeal. The dark hair that framed his face looked silky soft and practically begged to have someone's fingers comb through it. There was a new scar on his face, a diagonal line that cut through his right eyebrow. She lightly traced it with her fingertip, wondering how he'd gotten it.

 _Please, Conn, wake up soon,_ she thought. The Dozen said that his semi-comatose state was due to his memories—his former self and everything that made him _Connor_ —colliding with all the mental programming and behavioural conditioning that'd been forced into his brain. Cutter described it as shorting out his programming. She just wanted him to wake up. She didn't know if he'd remember anything or if he'd still be like the rest of the Dozen, but she hated to see him just lying there. She sighed and turned on her mp3, sitting beside him with head on his shoulder; it was far too quiet in the ARC without her music. And of course, the first song to come on was the one that meant the most. A smile pulled at her lips. She couldn't for the life of her remember what it was called or who'd written it, and it was one of those slow, pleasant songs that could easily be a lullaby. _Remember this song, Conn? You used to sing it 'round the flat all the time,_ she thought, and he had; whenever he thought he was alone, he'd either hum the tune or sing it so softly it was barely audible.

She pulled her lashes open and let out a strangled gasping cry of surprise; Connor's head was turned towards her, and his eyes were open. A wide grin spread across his face, putting the familiar dimple in his cheek. "Hello, Abby," he said.


	11. Distrust

Cutter could tell before he even walked into the med room that Connor was awake and had changed. He could quite literally smell it. All of the Dozen had this scent that distantly echoed the scent of the Complex itself, a mixture of blood, metal, and chemicals, but when he walked in, Connor's scent had shifted, changed to something…pleasant. It was like a blend of deep earth, wood smoke, fresh-cut hay, and new grass, mixing in with Abby's scent of flowers, reptile musk, and coconut shampoo. Sore and battered as he was, he was still on edge from fighting with Merinus, and he felt a degree of battle-readiness tension return to his shoulders. He didn't know what they would be greeted with upon entering the med room. Connor was a part of the Dozen, which meant he was a trained assassin with combat skills that could take Bruce Lee down a peg or twelve, and there was no telling just how much of the behavioural conditioning had survived.

As the others all started returning to their respective offices, he reached out and caught hold of Jenny's wrist in one hand. With his other hand, he snagged the back of Stephen's jacket, pulling the man to a halt. "Come with me," he said quietly. At their identical looks of confusion, he lowered his voice further to avoid attracting attention. "Connor's awake. C'mon." He only wanted Stephen and Jenny to accompany him, because Connor didn't know Danny, Sarah, or Becker as well as he knew them. Hopefully the sight of familiar faces would keep the young man anchored.

When they walked into Medical, Connor was sitting on the edge of his cot with his back to the door, but Cutter saw the line of his back go rigid a second before the dark-haired lad whirled around, a flash of brilliant silver leaving his hand so fast it was only a blur. Cutter didn't even have the chance to move, and the knife hissed past his left ear so close that he felt the stir of air against his cheek. Jenny and Stephen both leapt back with startled noises as the blade buried itself in the wall just behind Cutter's head, quivering slightly, and Abby made a distressed gasp of, _"Connor!"_

"You missed," Cutter said, proud that his voice didn't shake at all.

"Not quite," Connor replied, staring fixatedly at the professor's left shoulder.

Cutter glanced down. His stomach lurched towards his toes when he saw the severed curl of gold-and-black hair on his shoulder. Reaching up, he brushed off the piece of hair, and he couldn't quite keep his fingers from trembling slightly. "Good aim, then," he mumbled.

Still gazing at him with fixed, unblinking eyes, Connor drew his legs up and turned to face them, now sitting cross-legged on the cot. Abby still stood beside him, fingertips of one hand lightly resting against his arm. His gaze didn't wander from Cutter as the other three members of the original team came around to stand near him. "The rest of the Manticore lingers here. They refused to leave, and now stand as guardians upon the watchtower, keeping the animals within their cages," he said quietly.

"The rest of the Dozen are still here," Stephen agreed, staring at the younger man curiously. "How'd you—?"

"He bleeds." Connor extended his hand—another knife, twin to the one that'd been thrown, gleamed in his hand—and he used the tip of the blade to push open Cutter's jacket slightly, tilting his head to look at the torn fabric underneath. "Did a little lioness think she could usurp the tiger from his throne? Exacting vengeance for scratches put to his porcelain doll, mayhaps?"

Cutter yanked the jacket closed once more, ignoring the worried look that Jenny sent his way. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

The younger man reached up and rubbed his hand across his forehead. A small frown worked between his brows, and for a moment, he looked like he used to, a student faced with a difficult problem in maths class. "The pieces are still scattered, but he knows where they lie and how to rebuild himself. There is a new core to hold it together, but there are those what do not belong to him still lingering," he mumbled. "The parts always make the whole, even when scattered. If they are covered in dirt, then they look broken, but they can be made shiny again. Pick them up from the dark places where they lay, shine them like new so they don't turn against you. New parts can be added, but the new parts are twisted and made of pain, covered in blood instead of dirt."

"Connor?" Abby's voice was soft and worried as she pressed her hand to his shoulder, a small frown of concern pulling at her features. "Are you alright?"

"No. Not now and never again," he muttered, so quiet it was inaudible to all but Cutter's ears, but then he straightened up, lowering his hand back to his lap. His dark eyes moved over Jenny and Stephen in examination, looking them both over head-to-toe with keen interest. Then his gaze went back to Cutter's. Blue eyes met black, neither blinking. "You left without me," he said softly. "Left me in the trappings of the spider's web."

All eyes in the room now shifted to the professor. "What? What's he talking about, Nick?" asked Jenny.

Cutter gritted his teeth to the point of pain. "No, I didn't," he forced out, pointedly not answering Jenny's question.

"Yes, didn't... Didn't even bother going back. Didn't care. Still doesn't."

"That's a damn lie," he growled quietly, hands curling into fists at his sides even as the others kept staring at him with a kind of apprehensive trepidation.

"What is he talking about, Nick?" Jenny repeated.

Abby's voice came out soft and horrified. "Did you _know_ he was in the Complex?"

"No," he snarled, then inwardly flinched at the harsh, grating tone of his voice, the growl of his inner beast rasping up his throat like sandpaper across stone. Forcing himself to swallow, he dug his nails into his palms and focused on the pain to help himself keep an even keel. Cutter could feel the accusing weight of their eyes on him, and it made him want to tear his bloody hair out. "I told you already that I didn't know whether or not he was alive when I got out of the Complex, and I meant it. I. Did. Not. Know," he ground out through his teeth.

Connor tilted his head to the side, dark hair brushing his shoulder. "Didn't even come to look, though. Just ran."

Cutter felt something in him twist painfully at that look of accusation the young man was giving him. He dug his nails into his palms once more, thinking about the consistent pain in his side to keep still. He wanted to say that he had never left if he thought that Connor was still alive, wouldn't have just run off. When he'd escaped the Complex—God, had it really only been two months?—he had been half-delirious from pain, hunger, and exhaustion, running on adrenalin, trying to get himself and some fifty other hybrids to safety before Helen managed to regroup and come back with her army of clones and canid hybrids. But even in his head it sounded like some half-arsed excuse. "Connor, I didn't know you were still alive. If I had, I would have gone back," he said at last. "But I thought—" His voice cracked slightly, and he forced himself to swallow hard. "I thought that you had died with the 200 other people that Helen killed with her insane experiments."

Connor sat back slightly, sitting up straight. He raked his fixed, unblinking eyes over Cutter once more before he sighed. "He believes you. But he doesn't trust you. Yet," he murmured, then got to his feet. The movement of his body had changed, from clumsy and stumbling to gracefully fluid. "I need to see my sister," he announced before striding to the door.

"I'll come with you." Abby jumped up and followed him out of the med room, giving Cutter one last apprehensive look over her shoulder. Stephen hesitated a moment longer, then followed the pair as well.

* * *

Abby didn't know how Connor knew where the rest of the Dozen were, but she simply tried to keep up with his long-legged stride, aware of Stephen following them close behind. The words from only a moment ago still rang in her ears. It was clear that Connor felt as though he'd been abandoned to fate by the professor, and it did seem that way, but she felt a little uneasy taking sides. Still, a part of her boiled with fury at the idea that Cutter would just leave Connor without even bothering to find out if he lived or not.

"You said you need to see your sister," Stephen ventured as they made their way through the ARC. "Who is that, exactly?"

"Quebec Sixteen Rho," Connor replied. "We are not as the others are. The Manticore itself is bound in silver cords, but we are bound by blood as well."

Abby glanced up at him in surprise. "You mean she's your _actual_ sister? As in, you two are related?" she asked. She didn't know that Connor had a sister; hell, she'd never known he had a family at all. He'd never talked about it, and she had never asked, either.

"Separate forces with an identical origin, yes." They walked out of the ARC into the cool night air. Nearby was the breezeway that connected the main building to the hybrids' bunker, and there wasn't a single soldier anywhere they could see. Both Abby and Stephen thought that it probably wasn't the best idea in the world, leaving a building full of semi-feral genetically engineered killers unguarded, but then the shape of Quebec Sixteen Rho seemed to melt right out of the darkness. Neither had heard or seen her approach until she was quite literally close enough to touch. Connor turned towards her with a smile on his face. "Big sister."

"Little brother," she replied, coming closer. She reached up and gently touched one finger to the middle of his forehead for some reason. "You put the pieces back together."

"Sometimes the needles come back," Connor replied softly, and she lowered her hand. "The animals have not tried to slip their leash?"

"No. A few hiss, but most purr with content. Happy to be safe. The tiger protects them," Quebec answered, looking towards the building where the hybrids were staying. "Still, we are as watchmen in the towers."

Connor nodded, smiling again. "Yes. I hear them."

"They have missed their Echo. Hard to function as twelve less one."

"Not Echo," the young man replied. "But not Connor either." He reached up and rubbed his forehead once more. "He is still trying to acertain exact perimetres and dimensions of identity. Not easy to do when there are so many factors that multiplicity alone becomes complex. Still, partial override of spider's programming was accomplished."

Quebec gave a small nod; apparently, she understood what he meant and was appeased by his answer. "The spider of doors will not be pleased to learn of the override."

"Affirmative."

She gave him a sly, sideways look. "You are pleased, though."

"Affirmative." The corner of his mouth drew up in a smile, and she grinned as well. It was easy to see the family resemblence when they smiled. Both Connor and Quebec had that same lopsided, one-dimpled grin that seemed to light up their entire face. Connor put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her against his side. "Will you remain?"

"Five hours and thirty-seven minutes left in shift. Yes," Quebec replied. "Goodnight." She stood on her toes and lightly kissed his cheek before disappearing back into the dark.

Stephen and Abby came up to his side. "So...that is your sister," the tracker repeated quietly.

"Yes."

A cold voice suddenly sneered, "Well, isn't that _sweet?"_ The abrupt voice made both of them startle, though Connor didn't move except to turn his head towards the source of the voice. Merinus, the red-head that Cutter had fought, stalked towards them. Her face was scratched and there was a dark band of swollen bruising across her throat. Still, a manic gleam flickered in her green eyes. "It would figure that you two were related." Her wild gaze raked over Connor from head to toe, and a sneer curled her lips. Her canine teeth were just a little longer than a normal person's, giving her the slightest hint of fangs. "I don't know why Cutter even let you and those other eleven freaks live. I might be a killer, but it's in a lion's nature to kill, isn't it? I may be an animal, but _you_...you're a science experiment. You were grown in a lab by scientists. _You're_ the real monster." Her gaze shifted over to Abby and Stephen, still playing silent audience to the exchange. "I'd stay away from it, if I were you. It looks human now, but just wait until that programming is triggered again. It would kill you without thinking twice about it."

Abby felt a little sick when she realised that Merinus was calling Connor an 'it', like he was an object instead of a person.

The red-head's wild eyes went to Connor once more. "You would kill them, wouldn't you, freak? I don't doubt that you would. Not for a second. Hell, I imagine a sick thing like you might just get off on it—"

In the blink of an eye, Connor had drawn his knife and was resting the deadly keen edge of it against Merinus's already-bruised throat. "Have care how you use that tongue, lioness," he cautioned, his voice still perfectly level yet somehow all the more dangerous for it. "Next time I will separate it from you."

Without another word, he lowered the knife and walked back into the ARC, guiding Stephen and Abby along with him, leaving Merinus standing by herself in the dark.

* * *

"Connor, if Quebec is your sister, couldn't you just tell her who she is?" Stephen asked later when they sat in his old office.

"Cannot. Violates the rules," the student replied as he lovingly ran a whetstone along the edge of his knife. All his knives were laid out on a soft blanket that'd been spread across his desktop. There were two double-edged knives long enough to be called daggers, slightly curved and etched with strange-looking designs along the flat. Another pair of small, thin blades were laid beside the daggers. There was another longer knife, almost a short sword, with those same designs etched in it. Also set out was a set of twelve throwing knives, roughly shaped like diamonds or arrowheads, as long as Stephen's palm and perhaps half as wide at their broadest point. They were too small to do any real damage, but considering the force and accuracy with which Connor could flick them at his target, they were still quite dangerous.

Stephen sat on the other side of the table with all the guns from his kit laid out in front of him, and he held Vera in his lap, taking his time to clean each part of his favourite rifle with care. "What rules?"

"Spider's code. Didn't want it, but it was inflicted upon them nonetheless. To simply enter the passcode would not be overcoming the firewall. Override failure," Connor replied, setting down one dagger and picking up its twin. He paused and frowned slightly at his own words. "He does not make proper sense. The wires still cross and short out."

The tracker idly waved him off. "No, no, I'll figure it out. Just give me a second," he said; the younger man raised his eyebrows in an expression that clearly said he was amused by this. Stephen chose to ignore that and focused instead on what Connor had said, turning the words over in his mind. All of the Dozen had a very odd way of speaking, none of it quite making sense unless one sat down and thought about it good and hard. Their thoughts apparently ran along tracks that couldn't be expressed in proper words, so they just used whatever was closest. If one thought about it hard, usually what the Dozen said was some kind of an allusion towards what they really meant. And Connor, whilst having his moments of coherence, was still quite mad for the most part. After a few moments of thought, he looked back up at the younger man. "If you just told Quebec who she was, it wouldn't be the same as if she'd found out for herself, and it wouldn't let her find her old memories again?" he asked hesitantly.

Connor's mouth pulled up in a small smile. "He is correct. Perhaps the tortoise has use beyond his claws," he murmured.

"Tortoise? What tortoise?" asked Abby as she came walking up to the table, having caught the last snatch of their words. She reached out without even realising it to place her hand on Connor's back, subconsciously seeking physical contact with him, just to assure that he wasn't going to disappear again.

Without looking up, Connor pointed his knife towards the other man. "Stephen is a tortoise."

Abby burst out in laughter.

"Stephen is _not_ a tortoise!" the older man protested indignantly, then paused with a frown. _Damn it, now_ I'm _referring to myself in the third-person, too. The crazy's rubbing off on me._ He refocused attention on his rifle, scowling down at Vera. "I'm not a tortoise," he mumbled again, more to himself than anything.

A small, crooked smile came to the younger man's lips, putting the one dimple in his cheek. The expression was so familiar that, just for a moment, it seemed like everything was back to normal. "Stephen _is_ a tortoise," Connor reiterated, then went on before the other man could protest, looking up at Abby with a wide, innocent expression on his face as he explained. "He is tough on the outside with a hard shell like stone and long claws to protect himself with, but soft and warm on the inside where no-one else can see. Big and slow and wise. Stephen is very much a tortoise." The blond beamed down at him, reaching up to stroke his dark hair.

That gave the tracker pause. When it was put that way…he couldn't really find any argument, really. If anything, it was a bit of a compliment. Still, not liking being described as a slow-moving reptile, he muttered under his breath, "Fine, but I am _not_ soft."

"Yes, he is," Connor chortled softly, the sound like velvet rubbed the wrong way mingling with Abby's bright laughter.

* * *

Elsewhere in the ARC, Becker and Danny stood in the training room with Whiskey and Foxtrot, looking over the futuristic weapons that had been taken from the Dozen as ordered. "This is EMD Mark V, Electro-Muscular Disruption weapon. Releases electricity upon firing, meant to stun and incapacitate without killing," said Foxtrot, touching her fingertips to the strange-looking guns that laid on the table. "Settings adjust with size of opponent. High voltage in small breaker will blow out all fuses, though, especially if multiple surges are inflicted."

Becker was smart enough to know that she meant if he zapped something small with a high setting or shot it too many times, it would fry said something to a crisp instead of just incapacitating it. "What about ammo? I never found any spare clips on any of you," he said.

"Power generated from within," Whiskey replied. "But it will overheat if used too often, and it requires a fully-charged power source. Also, do not fire around metals."

"Why not?" Danny wondered.

"Pinball," Foxtrot said calmly; the copper stared at her hard, as if trying to see her insanity, even though it existed in a dimension that was beyond visual perception. She rolled her eyes as if _he_ was somehow the stupid one. "Electric discharge rebounds off highly conductive material such as metal. Could hit anyone," she explained, sounding almost pained to have to explain an already perfectly reasonable explaination, and they could all hear the silent _duh_ tacked on to the end.

"Right. What about this?" Becker asked to refocus the conversation. He picked up the thin metal rod, no thicker than his little finger, that tapered off to a point at the end. "Seriously modified cattle prod?" he ventured, remembering how it'd thrown Danny halfway across the room once.

"Subjugation rod," replied Whiskey, a small frown pulling at his brows. "Meant for hybrids, not cattle."

"No kidding," the copper muttered, reaching up to massage his shoulder. Just talking about it made him ache.

Foxtrot stared at him with that fixed, eerie stare that seemed to look right on through him, like she was reading the thoughts right off the back of his skull. The corner of her mouth curled up. "Methinks that Danny-boy has felt the touch of the rod and has been subjugated quite forcefully," she giggled in a disconcerting way; it became downright unsettling, though, when Whiskey gave a soft laugh as well, his deep baritone counterbalancing her higher voice. Becker stifled a snort of laughter himself.

Danny scowled, not enjoying the joke as much as they did. "Where did you get this stuff, anyways?" he asked, picking up the EMD. To him, it seemed awful small to take down much of anything.

"The spider snared the lucky green man from the tunnels," answered Whiskey Two Lambda as he took the EMD back and placed it on the table. He frowned slightly as if somehow displeased. "Fastened a noose of spidersilk about his neck, threatened to drip venom into the water and poison those he swore to protect. Had to make toys for the spider and her pets lest he fail in his mission."

The copper shook his head. "Mad as hatters, the lot of you," he muttered; Foxtrot stuck her tongue out at him.


	12. Needles and Thread

When they got back to the flat, Abby wasn't surprised that Rex came swooping down from the rafters. The little green lizard was practically beside himself with excitement at the return of his other favourite human. Connor smiled and allowed the wriggling reptile to crawl all over him. It was clear that there was no love lost between them.

Sid and Nancy, the two diictodons they'd rescued from the hospital anomaly the day he and Cutter were taken, came sniffing over curiously as well. They had never seen this particular two-leg about their new den-place before, but his scent was familiar and lingered in the den-mother's nest because Abby had taken to sleeping with some of Connor's old clothes, and the flying nest-mate greeted him with enthusiasm, so they decided that this new two-leg was part of their nest as well.

Abby giggled as the two diictodons rubbed their little bodies against Connor's ankles, nudging at him and calling for affection. "They like you," she laughed.

He bent his knees, crouching on his heels and studying the little creatures that scurried around him. "Diictodon. Permian era. Herbivores. Burrowers. Social creatures," he murmured, stroking Nancy's head with his fingertips. A vacant look came to his eyes for a moment, and his voice became oddly soft and blank as he whispered almost inaudibly, "Warm…home-smell. Food…. Den-place…nest-mate. Good den-mother."

"What was that?" Abby asked.

Connor shook himself out of his brief reverie, blinking rapidly as he looked up at her. "Unintentional formation of linked thought-processes is all. Unimportant." He straightened up, Rex perched on his shoulder with tail curled around his neck. Stepping over the small forms of Sid and Nancy, he began to walk around the flat, lightly trailing his fingertips across all the surfaces within reach, like a blind man learning Braille, refamiliarising himself with the flat that had been their home. "Familiar dimensions and parametres. Full of echoes, but there is no blood or darkness to taint the shimmers." His lips curved up into that familiar one-dimpled grin that always made her heart give a little lurch in her chest. "Home."

"It wasn't quite the same without you 'round," she admitted, flopping down on the couch; she patted the empty space beside her invitingly. Connor crossed the room silently—part of her wondered how he managed to walk without making so much as a sound—and reclined gracefully beside her. _Huh. Graceful. There's a word I'd never thought I'd use to describe Connor Temple,_ she thought, then looked over at him, only to find him gazing right back. His dark eyes seemed to look clean through her, like he could see past every wall she'd ever built right into the very heart of her. It was as frightening as it was thrilling, seeing him look at her like that, and she quickly dropped her gaze to her lap. One hand reached out to grasp his hand, lacing their fingers together. "So, Conn…"

"So, Abs," he replied.

A flush crept up her neck at the use of his old nickname for her. "What…what happened to you? In that Complex place?" she asked at last, and she felt him go rigid beside her. Quickly, she plowed onward. "I mean, none of the others will talk to me about it. Not Cutter or the Dozen, and I—I want to know what went on in there."

He was so still, and so silent beside her that she feared he wouldn't answer at all, but then, finally, after a small eternity of silence, his voice came out barely more than a murmur. "I was unmade."

Her eyes returned to his face, saw the tight lines around his eyes and mouth, and she moved closer to him in silent comfort. He lifted one arm, and without hesitating, she settled against his side, his arm resting around her shoulders as if the past year hadn't transpired and they were watching a film on movie night. Except that things were so different now. Everyone had changed, and not all for the better. Abby placed her hand on his knee, and he wrapped his fingers around hers.

"There was no existence in the beginning. No sight, no sound, nor taste or feeling or smell. Just darkness. Had no thoughts. No memory, either. Nothing at all, but the oblivion. Consumed all," he began quietly, eyes vacant as he stared straight ahead without seeing. "When the darkness ended, there was instead fire. Agony that swallowed up everything. Could not think for the pain. To even breathe was to inhale the flames, and there was no way to escape them. I wanted to die, if only so the pain would stop. I thought I would die. Just burn up to ash and blow away on the wind. But didn't. All in pieces then, scattered all about, until the spider of doors put him back together."

Abby squeezed his hand gently. "The spider of doors? Is that Helen?" she asked quietly. She had heard the Dozen mention a spider before, though she had never understood quite what they meant by it.

He hissed through his teeth like a burnt cat, and for a second, his grip went so tight it hurt before loosening. "We do not call it that. A spider she is, so a spider we call her," he ground out.

"Okay, sorry," she apologised, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. A spider, that was a good name for Helen. Patient, ruthless hunters that wove inescapable webs around themselves. "Keep going."

"She had puppets, little hollow men tied up in threads, and they danced as she pulled on the strings, putting all his pieces back together," Connor went on after a moment. Speaking of the spider by name had ruffled his thoughts unpleasantly, and he had to smooth them out first. "Rebuilt him. Added new pieces, too, ones that do not fit and do not belong. New bits that are twisted to cause hurt and are oiled with blood. Remade him to be a weapon. A new puppet, new hollow man, like clockwork for her to wind up as she wished, who would dance upon the strings without knotting them up. Obedient little marionette all covered in blood."

Abby had come to realise that Connor talked about himself in third person when he referred to his temporary identity of Echo Thirteen Omega. She had seen the 'clockwork man' that Helen had tried to remake him into, when he'd been in full grip of his behavioural conditioning in the ARC, and it downright terrified her. Feeling unspeakably grateful that he'd overcome it, she pressed a little closer to him, taking in the warmth of his body.

"Eleven others were made. Once there were many, but they could not survive the refining process. Crumbled away to ashes." Connor paused for a moment, eyes closing. He had felt every single death, had felt the pain within him as the Manticore lost more of its structures, and their ever-silent screaming continued to claw at him. The blue-handed puppets had cut away that which was not strong, carved out the soft tissues until only the steel remained, and he still felt every slice of the blade. But then the little bird squeezed his hand, and he came back to himself. "Twelve remained. Called Deadly Dozen by the blue-hands," he said, then glanced down at her. "Not funny."

"I didn't say it was," Abby replied, her thoughts going all cerise with bafflement.

He shook his head. "Not you. The puppets. Thought it was humorous," he explained, and her thoughts went all smooth and green again as she calmed. "The spider made us to be serpents, a Praetorian Guard, strike with speed and venom so she would be left to weave her threads without interruption. But we were not complete. Wanted all the serpents to be charmed by the same tune, so she need pull on only a single thread to effect all marionettes. Chain reaction. One action, many reactions. So their walls were all torn down. Stuck in needles to make them think and bound them all up in silver cord so to be as one."

Her face went slack. "Y'mean, they really put _needles_ into your brain?" she asked in horror.

Connor reached up and touched his fingertips to his head, a small frown pulling at his brows. "Yes. Often. Went right here," he said, tapping the middle of his forehead; it was the same place that Quebec had touched before. "Still hurts, sometimes, though it is mere psychosomatic pain and not actual physical discomfort. Ghost-echoes still remain. Puppets stuck in needles to thread the silver cord within us, tear down the walls and expand their sense of parametres."

Abby paused for a moment as she contemplated that. Her stomach churned at the thought of actually shoving needles into someone's _brain._ Hell, she felt queasy just getting a shot. The idea of having a piece of pointy metal shoved beneath her skin made her shudder. But needles in her brain? She felt ill just thinking about it. "What do you mean, silver cord?" she asked, trying to remove thoughts of needles going into brains from her mind. The silver cord was another thing that she'd heard the Dozen say many times, but she failed to understand what it meant.

A small frown pulled at his features as he struggled to find the words. Every time he tried to grab one of the slippery little things, it'd drift away again. "Linked together. Up here," he said, gesturing to his head. "Made new receptors and tuned them in to each other." He frowned again. "Not right. Being splintered is exceedingly frustrating," he growled in irritation.

But his little bird was clever and starting to catch on. "Y'mean, you lot can…what, read each other's minds? Like, you're a psychic?" Abby queried in disbelief.

He grinned at her as if she'd said something brilliant. "Correct. But, it is not preternatural in origin. It is a neurolink installed within the amygdalae," he said.

"The amid—the _what?"_

"Amygdalae. Small structures, size of almond, present within the front part of temporal lobe," Connor replied. "Seat of emotional control. Allows for repression of unwanted feelings. Neurolink placed there, so we are to feel the amygdal reactions of others with a neurolink that has been programmed to same coding."

Abby was quiet for a few minutes, reeling internally with the prospect of anything like that being possible. After a moment of collecting her own thoughts, she said hesitantly, "So…you can feel each other's emotions?"

"Correct."

"Can you read each other's thoughts?"

He paused for a moment. "Correct…and incorrect. Hard to explain to one incapable of experiencing it for their own. Does not appear like text upon paper, more as impressions. Many sensory inputs that are to be read as a collective to determine meaning."

"So, it's not like words, but more like…a general feeling, a basic impression of how they feel and you can interpret it?" she guessed, and he grinned again, nodding the affirmative. "That is…amazing."

"Yes. Use of silver cord is highly beneficial. When engaged in combat with numerous opponents, open neurolink to fullest capacity, move as one unit so as to not be overwhelmed. When separated from each other, signal can be traced back to its source and information exchanged over distance," he explained, but then his expression faltered slightly. "And when suffering, all can share in anguish and become merciless for it."

Abby laid her head against his shoulder. "Oh, Conn," she breathed softly, eyes closed as she pressed herself closer to his side. "So, is there no way for you to…turn it off? I mean, can't you disable it somehow or…?"

"Full disabling of neurolink cannot be done without removing the amygdala as a whole," he answered. "But the amount of input can be controlled."

"You can choose what the others get from the link?"

"Somewhat. Very powerful reactions, such as pain and fear, are far more difficult to regulate. But if it is private and not meant to be shared, then it will remain private until voluntarily revealed. We do not search for what is not offered. Still have rights to privacy, even when mentally connected," Connor answered. "Usually, we keep the neurolink at lowest capacity, thin the silver cord to only a filament. Allows for separation of thoughts and maintenance of mental seclusion. Only opened when needed. Must be mutual as well," he added, and she looked at him in confusion. He paused for a moment, thinking, then had an idea. "Use of metaphors provides clarity for baffling situations. I will use Quebec and myself as example, yes? Two rooms, separate from each other, connected by a corridor with doors on both ends. One room is hers, the other is mine own, corridor is neurolink. We close the doors to maintain isolation. Quebec may open the door to her room and cross the corridor, yet cannot interact until I open the door to my room as well. Understand?"

Abby did. She was starting to realise that it was easier to simply ask Connor to try a different method of explanation than to ask what he meant. "You both have to open the neurolink in order to feel each other's thoughts," she said, and he nodded. She placed her head against his shoulder once more. "You never cease to amaze me, Connor. You really don't."

He wanted to tell her about the other thread, the one that bound him to her in his core, the shiny new piece that now held together all his fractured bits. But he knew that he must tread carefully. His little bird feared being caged, was terrified of it, but it was more than that. She had seen so much hurt and pain and false dreams crumble away to dust and promises turn to lies that she now was cautious of any offering of kindness, kept herself at distance so she could not be wounded. She had built up many layers of hard plating around a tender, warm heart, and he would have to be very gentle in removing those layers lest he frighten her away. Connor wanted to hold that affectionate and warm heart she hid away, but utmost care must be taken. He sat there in silence, trying to pull together the words he needed, but the slippery damn things kept sliding away and leaving him clueless.

Abby wished that she had the words to tell him how she felt. She loved him, knew without a doubt that she did. The year without him was a splash of icy water to the face, and she knew now that living without him would be like living without sunlight. It made everything feel cold and unfriendly, the total lack of him and his strange sense of humour, his nerdy ways of making her laugh, the simple, unelaborate way in which he cared about everything and everyone. She was a little ashamed of how long it'd taken her to figure it out, considering all the months he'd been pining after her so long. He was sweet and kind and thoughtful, a man that genuinely cared about _her_ and not just her looks. He was warm, tender, and caring, everything that she could ever want in a man. Even when she'd acted like a royal prat and treated him so bad that it bordered on cruelty, he still stuck around and did everything that he could to make her happy, even if it meant giving up his own happiness.

But now that he was back, she just had no idea how to tell him. Most of it was cowardice. She was terrified that he might not feel the same way about her anymore. So much had changed, _everything_ had changed, and now she was scared, downright terrified in fact, that if she told him that she loved him, he wouldn't say it back and then her heart would just shatter. As she leant her head against him, trying to think of some way to tell him just how much she loved him now.

"Abby," he said softly, and she blinked in surprise, lifting her head to look at him. "Could I…?" He paused a moment, a tiny frown pulling at his face. She recognised that expression; it was the same face he wore when his inventions kept shorting out, his 'thinking' expression. "Might I be allowed…to come back home?" he asked at last.

 _Oh, Connor…_. Before she could think of anything to say, though, the doorknob rattled. Connor's head snapped towards the door, going tense against her. Rex showed his crest and flew to the rafters; Sid and Nancy growled as they hid in their basket, burrowing under the cushions. The door swung open, and in walked a young man with shaggy, light brown hair and a smug expression on his face. "What's up, Abby?" he asked as he strode in, shoving his keys back in his pocket. His gaze fell on Connor, and the cocky smile faltered slightly. "Who're you?"

Connor didn't speak, narrowing his eyes. Abby hastily jumped up. "Oh, uhm, Jack, this is my friend from work, Connor Temple," she said, walking over and grasping Jack by the arm; she guided him over to the couch. "Connor, this is Jack, my baby brother."

The dark-haired man stood up as they approached, still eyeing Jack suspiciously, like he was somehow untrustworthy or dangerous.

"Hey, how's it goin'?" Jack asked. "So, Abby, you never told me that you had a boyfriend."

"He's—" Abby started to reply, but then faltered. She was about to say that he _wasn't_ her boyfriend…but wasn't that exactly what she wanted him to be?

"You are living here," said Connor quietly.

Jack stared at Connor a little warily now. "Yeah, I am. What's it to you?"

"It is indication that I will not be moving back in," Connor replied, and Abby felt her stomach relocate to her toes.

"No, Conn—"

"Yeah, you're right," Jack said, taking a challenging step forward. "Oh, wait a tick…. You're that nerdy bloke that used to live in the loft, aren't you? Just up and disappeared without bothering to move your junk out the flat?"

Connor stood tense, unmoving where he stood, fists clenched at his sides. "He did not disappear, he was taken," he ground out, and then a shiver rolled down his backbone like a ripple. "The bristles crawl across his skin and feel as insect legs. Like ants. Eat of flesh and drag everything down into the dark. It has gone cobalt and spiky again," he muttered under his breath, eyes tight closed as he brushed his fingers across his forehead, tracing the invisible scar where the needles had gone.

Jack edged back a step. "Whoa, Abs, you never said he was crazy."

His dark gaze snapped towards the younger Maitland, a look of indignation written across his face. "I am _not_ crazy. My reality is different. So there," he replied icily.

"You're a freak is what you are."

Connor gave a furious hiss like a burnt cat. "You would need an IQ above room temperature to even begin understand what I am, ignorant little child."

"Connor, stop it!" Abby snapped. "That's enough."

The young man's dark gaze shifted to her, and the look of fury in his eyes made her insides feel as if they'd turned to liquid. "I will see you at the ARC tomorrow," he ground out, then turned on heel and strode out of the flat, slamming the door behind him.

* * *

He was descending the stairs when he felt the soft tickle of other minds at the perimetres, and he turned. The little burrowers were struggling to make their way down the stairs on their awkwardly short legs, grunting and huffing in irritation. Rex glided down to perch on his shoulder, tail curling around his neck. Connor smiled at the brief flickering images that he received from the mind of the Permian-era refugee. The three little creatures had escaped through the door that the younger Maitland so thoughtlessly left ajar, and were attempting to make their escape with him. "You do not like the Jack of slimy trades, either. I understand wholly," he said.

Having conquered the stairs, Sid and Nancy huddled near his feet, not wanting to be anywhere near the parasite that had infested their den. He understood that. Shedding his jacket, he leant down and carefully gathered up the diictodon in the fabric. "You needn't fret so. The ARC has no parasites. It will make a very lovely temporary den," he soothed.

Part of him wished that he could tell Abby of their new thread, explain to her everything, but it was not an option. Not so long as that polecat was around. Jack Maitland was not to be trusted; he only wished Abby could see it, too.


	13. Frustration

"Connor, what are you doing here? I thought you'd be staying with Abby," said Jenny as she saw the dark-haired young man in the hallway. She'd seen the two of them leave hours ago, and she was glad to see that there seemed to be no love lost between the two of them. And yet here he was.

He sighed and shook his head. "Miss Lewis, you are my friend, so I ask you politely to leave me to myself. I am feeling very scattered now. He would not like to vent aggressions at you for something you did not do," he said, and she could see the lingering traces of hurt and anger in his eyes.

Jenny nodded understandingly. "Okay. Goodnight," she murmured, and he nodded as he walked away. She had a dark suspicion that something had happened with Abby to make him this upset, and she prayed that things hadn't gotten mucked up between them again. It seemed that everyone else on the team knew that Abby and Connor were one of those rare couples that truly did belong together—everyone except Abby, of course. Not only that, but Jenny had twenty quid in the betting pool as to when they'd finally get together. As she walked into Cutter's office, she noticed that the professor looked more asleep than awake, sitting at his desk with one elbow on the desktop, head resting against his hand, eyes closed. He made no move as she approached, and she reached out to touch his shoulder. "Nick?"

He gave a violent start, half-falling out of his chair. "Jesus, don't do that!" he gasped, then put a hand to his side with a groan.

"I didn't think I'd actually startle you," Jenny replied. She really hadn't. His senses were so keen that he could tell who'd walked into a room without even looking, just by the scent that they carried. "And what's the matter?" Ignoring his muttered protests, she gently reached down and pulled open his military jacket, instantly noticing how the fabric felt heavier than it ought've. Underneath, his shirt was in shreds and dark with blood. From the way it'd dried stiff in some places, it wasn't exactly fresh, either. "Nick!" she admonished worriedly. "I thought you'd gone to see a medic for this hours ago."

"It'll be fine," he said through gritted teeth, trying to brush her hands aside.

She wasn't so easily deterred, though, pulling open his jacket the rest of the way. "Jesus, Nick, why the hell didn't you say anything about this?" she asked as she gingerly inspected the wound. It looked as if Merinus had done more than just graze his side in their earlier fight. A part of her inwardly marvelled at his pain tolerance, as he had been walking around for hours with a wound like this without ever giving any indication that he was in any sort of pain. The other parts of her, though, were just flat-out pissed at him.

He clenched his jaw and didn't answer her. He wasn't sure how to tell her that it he _couldn't_ say anything about it. Instinct that'd been ingrained into him over the past year declared that revealing any sort of weakness was just asking for trouble and dissent amongst the ranks. And after forcibly shoving Merinus back down into submission—it wouldn't last too long, though—he couldn't afford to look vulnerable in any way; it'd practically be a neon sign announcing that he could be taken down. His inner animal snarled at the very idea of it. Still, the beast was amused by her need to protect him. Her—a delicate little human woman, so easily breakable, yet so determined to keep him safe. Hell, his human side was amused, too. He had to be a good twenty pounds heavier, a few inches taller, and many times stronger than her, but she still fretted over him.

_Female. Gentle. Warm. Ours._

Cutter jerked in surprise at the brush of the tiger's thoughts against the edges of his mind. Rarely was his animal half ever so present as to actually present him with proper thoughts instead of just raw instincts and urges. Then he realised what'd been thought. _No. Down, boy. Not ours,_ he thought back; the beast rumbled a low growl of irritation at that. Jenny was _not_ his, and he had no right to get possessive over her.

"Oi, are you listening to me?" Jenny demanded, snapping him out of his thoughts, and he hastily refocused attention on her, pushing aside the animal for the time being. "I said, get up. We're going home, and when we get there, I _am_ going to take a look at that 'little scratch' of yours, Nick Cutter," she said, the tone of her voice making it clear that she wasn't about to listen to any argument, either.

"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled as he stood up wearily, not protesting as she put a supportive around him, careful to avoid his hurt side. His inner animal growled with satisfaction.

* * *

"You are cerise."

Connor looked up from the book he was reading to see Foxtrot standing over him, bent at the waist with dark hair spilling over her shoulders to frame her face in a pattern of loose ringlets and waves that he found to be quite mesmerising. "I am."

She looked to the two diictodons that were curiously exploring their temporary den, a large concrete room with a nest for them to sleep in and a shelf for Rex. There was also a cot for himself, seeing as how he knew they would be afraid without their two-leg nest-mate there to protect them from predators, and he felt more comfortable around them. "They miss their den," she said.

"There are parasites," he said. "Correction. Parasite. Singular. Polecat, a jack of slimy trades that is unfortunate kin to the little bird. Solution—temporary displace themselves from the den until cleansing can be done." He put his head back with a heavy sigh, lying his book open across his stomach and staring at the ceiling. Rex was flying in loops and spirals around the ceiling, and he traced the Coelurosauravus's flight pattern with his eyes. "The little bird…is exceedingly frustrating."

Foxtrot gently felt along his thoughts, sorting through the memories that had risen to the forefront of his mind. She made a face. "Parasites. A nuisance that infests a place and causes it to be uninhabitable. Quite accurate," she said, then lowered herself to the floor. Sid bounded over to her with a piece of rope in his jaws, offering it to her. She took hold of one end as he kept hold of the other, each exerting force upon the rope in an attempt to claim it. "Little bird is blinded by the polecat's sleight of hand. She sees only the grin and not the fangs behind it. With one paw he offers repentance and with the other he steals the eggs from the nest."

"Yet she will not believe it," he agreed with a shake of the head. "Hard-headed little bird. Frustrating."

"Very frustrating." Foxtrot released the rope, and the sudden lack of resistance made Sid tumble backwards. She looked over at him. "I taught the tree to use the EMD. Did not believe it would work, so I had to shoot him."

He snorted. "Whiskey must have surely enjoyed it."

"Yes. So did the fox," she agreed with a smile. "Used low settings, though. Did not do any permanent damage. Except to his pride."

Connor laughed at that. "There is a new creature in the menagerie. Dracorex, part of family _Pachycephalosauridae,_ from the Late Cretaceous of North America," he said.

"Dracorex. Dragon king," Foxtrot said. "Oxymoron, considering that eats only of green and not of flesh."

He had always found that amusing as well. "Should we go see her?"

"We should. Probably needs comfort. Being chased by knights in rusty armour is no fun." They both stood up, heading for the menagerie, and for a brief moment, thoughts of his frustrating Abby-bird and the slimy Jack of all trades were pushed to the side.

* * *

"Y'know, if this is what you call a 'little' scratch, Nick, I don't even want to _know_ what a big scratch looks like on you," Jenny muttered.

He started to laugh, then hissed through his teeth as she pressed the alcohol-soaked cloth against his side, the furious sting working its way down into the wound. He was sitting on the bathroom counter beside the sink in her house, the first-aid kit open next to him, with his shirt off so she could get a proper look at his side. Merinus had gotten her claws into his side and torn four parallel slashes across his lower ribs; it wasn't deep enough to be life-threatening, but damned if it didn't sting like a bitch.

Jenny was marvelling once more at the sight of him, at the scars he bore and the strange, tattoo-like stripes that marked his shoulders and sides. Her fingers itched to reach out and trace across the stripes, but she forcibly held back. "It doesn't look infected, but I think it'll scar," she noted.

"I don't mind scars."

She rolled her eyes. "Sure you don't, tough guy. Next time, though, tell me that you're hurt instead of just leaving it." She gently peeled the cloth away, wiping away the dried blood as she did so, then began taping on bandages. Carefully, she smoothed down the bandage, noticing that her fingers were lingering just above the two dark stripes that marked each side; unable to resist, her fingers began to slip down towards them, just skimming along the edge.

"Jenny…" said Cutter in low warning tones. He'd always somewhat detested those damned stripes, seen them as a permanent reminder that he wasn't human anymore, but now the darkened skin seemed particularly sensitive to touch, especially with her feather-light fingertips brushing his skin. "Don't."

She drew her hand away. "What is it?"

"Just...don't." Sliding off the counter, he pulled on a clean shirt, ignoring the pain it sent rippling down his side.

Jenny leant up against the sink for a moment, silent, but when he tried to brush past her, she reached out and grasped his arm, drawing him to a stop. "Nick. Why didn't you say that you were hurt?" she asked quietly.

He let out a heavy sigh, leaning against the doorframe. "Because I...it's hard to explain," he muttered, rubbing one hand across the back of his neck. He'd never actually tried to put the animal instincts he felt into words before. It was hard to define at all; he simply went along with it. But Jenny was gazing at him with that _look_ that said she damn well expected an answer, a proper answer, from him before either of them got any rest. He was starting to wonder if there was anything he wouldn't do for this woman if she asked. "You saw how I had to fight Merinus, how the hybrids work as a pride?" he asked, and she nodded. "That's because right now, I am head of the pride, the alpha. The rest of them follow my orders. I didn't get to be the leader by using my charming ways and rugged good looks, though. When we were still in the Complex, I knew that if we were ever going to get out of that place, if we ever did get free, then we'd have to work together to do it. Thing is, nobody would listen to me because Merinus was in charge then, and she had them all at each other's throats more often than not. So I had to fight them. Not just her, but her little sycophants that would've taken over if she died. Killed two of them; they'd have killed me otherwise. I had to, because they... _we..._ despise weakness. We abhor it. It's part of our animal instinct. The strong survive and the weak don't. The pride couldn't allow a weak leader. So, when I did manage to become alpha, I couldn't take the chance of ever appearing weak, because the second I did, Merinus would leap on the chance to take over. That meant that when I was hurt or tired, I couldn't let it show. I couldn't. It'd have been a death warrant. And it's still hard for me to say anything," he admitted.

Jenny was silent for a few minutes as she absorbed that information. In a way, it did make sense, considering the way that the hybrids behaved. And she had only ever seen them in situations that were more-or-less calm. She had no doubt that when they were in a state like they must've been whilst in the Complex, they were absolutely terrifying. Hell, Cutter himself was more than scary when he was in a mood. Stepping closer to him, she lifted her chin to meet his eyes directly. "I understand that, Nick, and I can see your point," she said softly. "But _I'm not them._ Alright? I'm not saying that you have to stop thinking that way because I know you can't. I'm just saying, you can tell _me._ Not them. Hell, I won't even make you see the medics in the ARC. But you tell me. That's the deal. Okay?"

Cutter let out a slow breath, reaching out to rest a hand on her arm. "Okay," he relented quietly. Then, to his surprise, she stepped forward, slid her arms around him, careful of his side, and hugged him tight as she could without hurting him, her head tucked against his shoulder. He went tense for a moment, stunned by the unexpected display of affection; she usually wasn't one to get all touchy-feely about much of anything. But then he relaxed, winding both arms around her back, a low, pleased growl rumbling out of his chest. "Becker and Quinn caught a Dracorex today," he murmured, then inwardly groaned. _The hell kind of thing is that to say? Smooth, Casanova. Real smooth,_ he scolded himself.

But she didn't pull away, still resting her head against him. "Did they?" she asked, her voice slightly muffled by his shoulder.

"Mm-hm. Part of the _Pachycephalosauridae_ family, from the Cretaceous. The name means 'dragon king', but there's always been a debate about whether or not they're a separate species or just a juvenile Pachycephalosaurus," he went on softly.

She gave a little giggle. "You are a man of odd enthusiasms, Nick Cutter," she laughed, pressing her head against him lightly.

He didn't grace that with an answer, resting his cheek against her hair. She smelt absolutely _delightful,_ he noted absentmindedly, like strawberry shampoo and soft, natural musk. He pressed his nose into the silky dark waves and breathed in the smell of her.

Jenny leant back slightly to look at him, head tilted inquisitively. "Were you _smelling_ me?" she asked, a smile playing around her lips.

"Hey, you called it—man of odd enthusiasms," he answered, trying for nonchalant even as he felt heat creeping up his neck.

She outright laughed at that, and he couldn't help but chuckle at the peculiarity of their conversations. When their laughter faded, he noticed for the first time just how close she really stood to him. He could feel the heat of her skin through their clothes, hear the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, see every freckle on the bridge of her nose. His arms still rested around her, so he felt every breath she took, the heat of her skin even through her blouse. Her soft breath just brushed his skin with each exhale. Of their own will, his eyes fell to on her lips, and he felt the sudden impulse to kiss her, find out how it'd feel to have her mouth pressed to his own…. _Stop it!_ He couldn't be thinking about her like that, never like that. Though it took what felt like a superhuman effort, he took his arms from her waist and leant away. "Goodnight, Jenny," he said quietly, ashamed of how husky his voice sounded. He slipped out of her arms, heading down the hall towards his bedroom, all the while inwardly cursing at himself.

* * *

Jenny watched him leave, then leant back against the doorframe, forcing herself to breathe deeply. She didn't understand that man. She really, really didn't. It seemed like every time she thought that they were perhaps making some headway into being more than just friends, he would find some way to withdraw from her, leaving her both stung and confused all at once.

Just now was a perfect example. She'd patched him up and managed to coax him into talking about what'd happened in the Complex. He'd trusted her enough to even let her take care of him. He was still hesitant about physical contact, yet she'd hugged him without issue. She'd made him laugh—she could count on the fingers of one hand how many times she'd heard him laugh since his return—and she'd thought...hoped...that he'd kiss her. And instead he'd walked away.

She didn't know what the hell was going on between the two of them, but she would have to sort things out soon or go utterly crackers for it.


	14. To Have a Tiger by the Tail

The next several days were, surprisingly, rather uneventful, with no new anomalies or any activity of the sort. For the most part, the team felt enormously grateful to have the chance to wind down some, recover and rest from the trials they'd been through in the past several weeks. Of course, that didn't mean that a dozen separate issues didn't roil beneath the surface of the calm, festering like an infection beneath a scab. Danny and Sarah still didn't trust the hybrids or the Dozen, not speaking to any one of them, not even Connor, unless asked a direct question. Abby was still irritated with Connor for the spat with Jack; he was equally vexed with her refusal to hear him out when he claimed that the polecat was only there to steal from her. Whenever he tried to approach her about it, she'd get defencive and snap back at him. Jenny was attempting to corral the professor and demand an answer from him, and Cutter was avoiding her as much as humanly possible.

In fact, the only three people unaffected by the seething web of tricky situations were Becker, Stephen, and Lester, and whilst the former two found it all to be quite amusing, the latter was exasperated with the entire lot. He was beginning to contemplate sending them all on leave until everything was sorted out properly. The Dozen had already proven themselves to be a more-than-capable backup team, and Lester only wished that he could somehow impose their insane-yet-unruffled serenity upon the rest of his employees. In fact, he found that the Dozen had grown on him. Insanity aside, they were smarter than a lot of the other scientists in the ARC and more capable than half the security force. Brains and brawn all rolled into one. Hell, he was starting to consider hiring them on. Maybe they could knock some sense into the team he already had.

* * *

"Hey, Conn," Stephen greeted as he came up to sit on the edge of the desk where Connor was putting together what looked like a DNA model…except that he'd made his out of straws, toothpicks, and what looked like either marbles or gumballs. "What, uhm, what are you doing here?" he asked in confusion.

"Wondering what the molecules that make up our genetic sequences would look like if they were nitrogenous instead of carbonized," the young man replied.

Stephen gave a soft laugh. "And now I _know_ that you're bored," he said. Hooking one toe around the leg of a chair, he drew up a seat and sat down next to the young man. "Have you talked to Abby at all yet?" he asked after a moment of eyeing up the strange model. He had taken it upon himself to attempt at playing mediator before Lester had a conniption and sent them all home, but he knew that it wasn't going to be easy. Mostly because he knew already just how stubborn his teammates could be, especially when it came to admitting fault and getting over pride. Even if Abby was a bullheaded little thing, Stephen felt that he could talk to Connor, which is why he chose to start off with them—whatever was going on between Jenny and Cutter, he wasn't even going to _touch_ that one.

The younger man sighed heavily, lowering his head to the desktop. "She is as iron, refusing to bend, and he fears that she will soon shatter for it," he murmured out, sounding miserable.

"Still the issue with Jack, then?" Stephen asked, and Connor nodded without lifting his head. He'd never actually met the younger Maitland in person. The Dozen, Connor included, usually referred to Jack as a parasite of some sort, or a polecat. Stephen hadn't even known what a polecat _was_ until he looked it up—it was a kind of vicious little weasel that could produce a terrible smell, like a skunk would—and he felt it was safe to say that Connor didn't much like Jack Maitland. From what he'd gathered, though, Jack was living with Abby in the flat, and Connor outright refused to go anywhere near the place so long as he was there. Even Rex, Sid, and Nancy had been moved to the ARC for the time being. Abby claimed that Connor had kidnapped her pets, but from the way the little creatures hissed and spat whenever she tried to take them back to the flat, Stephen was a tad more inclined to believe Connor's story of the creatures trying to escape from the flat instead of being forcibly removed. He was morbidly curious about Jack, and he was thinking about arranging a meeting soon.

Connor tilted his head to look at Stephen through his dark hair. The look on the young man's face was the very epitome of misery; nobody in the world could pull off the kicked-puppy expression better than a sad Connor Temple. "I try to warn her of his treachery, but when I do, she goes all auburn and russet and refuses to listen. Flies away and shoves feathers in her ears," he mourned. "She will be stung by the polecat's teeth, yet she will not drive him from the nest."

"Auburn…and russet?" Stephen echoed.

The student huffed. "He forgets that others cannot taste thoughts as he does." He paused, brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to find proper words. "She shields the polecat with her wings and shows her talons to those trying to help her."

 _I didn't even know thoughts could taste like anything at all. And how do you taste a colour, anyways?_ the tracker thought to himself, then refocused. Most of the Dozen usually alluded to themselves and others either as animals or some sort of object. He was a tortoise, much to his irritation, Abby was a bird, Becker was a tree—he and Whiskey had once talked for a half-hour on how the captain was a tree, and it made a surprising amount of sense—Cutter was a tiger, Jenny was a china doll (he still didn't understand that one, though), and the Dozen themselves were serpents. And Helen, he'd come to understand, was the spider of doors they constantly hissed of. "She gets all protective of him and gets angry at you for trying to make her see sense?" Stephen guessed, and Connor nodded. "And that happens every time you try to talk to her?" Another nod. "Have you tried a different approach?"

"How do you mean?" Connor asked.

"I mean, maybe she won't listen to you, but isn't there any sort of way you could…show her instead?" Stephen suggested.

The younger man's lip curled in distaste. "The parasite is clever. Jack of oily trades only does his trickery when she is ignorant, but turn the spotlight to him, and he will offer up grins and repentance, hiding his teeth and sharpening his claws behind his back," Connor growled, then sat up abruptly, taking one of the small throwing knives from his belt and flinging it across the room. It _thunked_ into the far wall with a solid noise; from the collection of small cuts in the wall, it wasn't the first time he'd played target practice. Lester would be _pissed._

Stephen mulled that one over for a moment or so, then decided to try a different tack. "Y'know, I've talked to Abby some, and she seems to think that you might have something with Foxtrot," he said, aiming for nonchalant, though he was curious himself. Connor spent a fair bit of time around Foxtrot; the only other woman he spent more time with was Quebec, but she was his sister, so she didn't count. Abby, despite all her pretense of not caring, had sounded quite jealous about it, too.

The young man looked startled. "Foxtrot One Kappa?" he asked, as if to be sure they were talking about the same person. As if there was someone _else_ in the ARC named Foxtrot. Connor stared at Stephen for a moment, then let out a snort of laughter. "No, no. She is as another sister, like Quebec is. Besides, Foxtrot does not dance with me as she has already taken her partner by the hand."

 _That_ one threw Stephen for a moment. "She's already got a boyfriend?"

Connor nodded as he stood up, walking around the desk to retrieve his knife. "Whiskey Two Lambda holds her hand and leads the steps. And when taking into account how violet their minds are, he is quite _proficient_ in the dance," he said, though from the mischievous gleam in his eyes, the 'dance' that he spoke of was an allusion to something only tangentially involving hands.

Stephen managed to keep a calm expression for perhaps two seconds before bursting out in laughter, the younger man joining in a moment later. For a moment, at least, things felt somewhat normal. After a moment, he glanced over. "Do you have any idea what's going on with Cutter and Jenny?" he asked.

The student sank down into his chair, absently turning the knife over in his clever hands, the silver blade reflecting the light in pale slashes. "She wants him as he wants her, taking each other by the hand and joining the dance as both know the steps. But the tiger fears that if he were to take hold of the porcelain doll in his paws, he would shatter her and himself in the process. It paints them both in shades of twilight and ruby," he sighed quietly, shaking his head slowly.

* * *

Cutter heard his office door close, and he hastily looked up from the paperwork on his desk. He cursed under his breath when he saw Jenny standing there with her I-mean-bloody-business face on, stubborn as ever. He had been avoiding her, insofar successfully, for the past several days because he knew that she'd demand an explanation from him and refuse to let him rest until he'd given one. Forcing himself to maintain a straight face, he straightened up in his desk, turning to face her. "Can I help you, Miss Lewis?" he asked, proud that his voice had come out level.

"Don't do that, Nick," she said softly, shaking her head. "I can tell just by how you've been avoiding me that you know damn well why I'm here and what I want to talk to you about." Crossing the office, she leant her hip against the edge of the desk, picked up a fossilised ammonite shell, and turned it over in her hands, tracing the ridges and divots of the shell with her fingertips. He found that he was unable to look directly at her lovely face and instead fastened his gaze on her slender fingers; she'd chosen to paint her nails black today, and she was wearing her favourite silver ring, the one with small blue stones in it. "What are we, Nick? Me and you?"

He swallowed hard, wishing that she hadn't closed the door. His instincts were screaming at him to make a run for it; even the tiger knew when he was cornered by a creature far more dangerous than any predator—a Jenny Lewis with her mind set. "What d'you mean?" he asked, and this time, his voice didn't come out totally level, a slight tremor to his words.

She sighed, gripping the ammonite tightly. "You know exactly what I mean. What are _we?"_

Still unable to look at her directly, Cutter kept his gaze trained on her hands. "I don't...know," he mumbled.

She huffed in irritation, not satisfied with the dismal reply. "I think that you do," she countered. "I think that you and I both know exactly what we are, or at least what we want to be. And the real question is...why aren't you doing anything about it?" she asked, setting the fossilised shell down on the desk.

Even without looking at her, he could feel the weight of her gaze focused on him, and he lowered his eyes to the floor. God, how in the world was he going to explain this one? How could he possibly tell her the truth? He was so lost in his own thought that he startled at the touch of her soft fingers on his jaw, lifting his chin so he met her eye directly. Unashamedly, he leant into the touch, seeing the silent pleading in her eyes. "I...I'm scared," he murmured, the words escaping him so quiet that she strained her ears to hear him.

Jenny blinked in surprise. Cutter was scared? Somehow, that didn't sound right in her ears. For as long as she'd known him, he had been their anchor, the one that everyone could depend on for guidance and support. Even though she knew logically that everyone felt fear at some point or another, the idea of _Cutter_ being scared didn't sit right with her. "Of what?" she asked softly, edging closer to him.

Without thinking about it, he reached up to lace his fingers with hers, leaning his head against her stomach, breathing in the warm scent of her skin. The warm silk of her blouse felt delightful against his sensitive skin, and he couldn't help but to rub his cheek against the soft fabric. Her fingers combed through his hair, nails just scratching against his scalp and making him shiver in delight; her other hand slid down to the back of his neck, gently massaging the tension out of his muscles. He wanted, more than anything, to be able to simply let her take care of him the way she so clearly wanted to, but a part of him still shied away out of fear. "I'm...I'm not normal, Jenny Lewis. I'm not even human anymore. That still scares me, and I—" He paused and swallowed hard. "I'm afraid, I'm bloody _terrified_ that I'll hurt you. You've seen how strong I am. All the time, I have to be careful that I don't accidentally break something or hurt someone else. And if I...if we were ever...together...I don't think I'd be able to control myself. I'd hurt you, and I-I couldn't live with that," he murmured, closing his eyes as he turned his head against her stomach.

Jenny took her hands from his hair, grasped his shoulders, and gently pushed him back, though his arms still rested around her waist. His familiar, pale blue eyes looked up at hers, more vulnerable than she had ever seen, and she knew that this wasn't some kind of excuse. He really was afraid that he would hurt her. "Nick," she said gently. "The way things are now, with everything turnt on its ear...we can't be so afraid of a possible outcome that we don't even try." She lifted a hand, brushing back a stray piece of his gold-and-black hair, and he tilted his head into her hand. "I trust you. I know what you are, and I don't care. You are still Nick Cutter, and I trust you. Don't you trust me?"

His eyes closed. "You know I do."

"Then _trust me_ , Nick. Everything will be alright," she murmured, lightly stroking his cheek.

Cutter didn't reply—he wasn't sure he even _could_ speak—and instead leant forward once more, unashamedly burying his head against her, arms tight around her waist. No doubt she could feel him trembling slightly, but she didn't say anything, just stroked his hair like she had before, her other hand rubbing little circles on his back. A growl rasped up his throat, rattling in the depths of his chest, and Jenny smiled at the sound of his low love-growl, the contented note more pronounced than ever. She gently patted his back. "C'mon, let's go home. There's nothing happening here anyways, and the paperwork will still be here tomorrow," she suggested, and he nodded in silent agreement, getting to his feet; when he grasped her hand tightly in his own, she didn't say anything, just smiled at him.

They'd made it nearly to the door when the familiar sound of the ADD began going off. Cutter sighed. "Perfect timing, as always."

* * *

The anomaly had appeared in a race track warehouse and had expulsed a huge creature that looked like the demonic bug-god of all insects. It'd scared Sarah witless, as the Egyptologist disgusted bugs in all forms, and Connor, Tango, Whiskey, Foxtrot, Quebec, and India had driven the creature out onto the track, where it'd been splattered by a speeding car.

"It looks like a giant sort of ant," Cutter said as he peered into the rubbish bin where they'd scraped most of the insect's pieces and slimy innards. He reached down into the bin and pulled out a large piece of what looked like the creature's leg, hard and spiny. "We'll have to take it back with us, do a full autopsy."

"Mantis," said Connor. "Not ant. Has wings, flies. The doorway leads to the future."

Becker snapped his gaze up to the younger man. "You're certain of it?"

India Four Gamma, a young woman with smooth dark skin and warm black eyes, peered into the rubbish bin with an expression of distaste. "Certain. Have felt its bite before." She pulled back her sleeve to show a jagged line of pale, waxy scar tissue across her arm. "Futuristic. Only enemy of the death stalkers," she said softly, referring to the Future Predators.

As they studied the insect goop in the bin, muttering to each other, Connor approached Abby, who was staring at the locked anomaly with a look of fascination. "Does Jack still inhabit the flat?" he asked, making an effort not to call the younger Maitland a parasite or a pest of any sort, as it was a certain way to make her turn all red and sandpapery again.

"Yeah, he does," Abby replied stiffly, not looking at him. But then she softened slightly, glancing over through the corner of her eye at him. He looked a little paler than usual, dark shadows lingering beneath his eyes. "Have you been sleeping at all? You look tired."

"Nightmares have grabby hands and pull at my thoughts. My sleeve is all unravelled," he mumbled back. "My siblings suffer the same, and the burrowers provide only small comfort."

"Y'mean Sid an' Nancy?" she asked, and he nodded. "What 'bout Rex? He's been alright?" she asked in concern, worried for her pets.

"Yes. Misses you, as do the small ones," he replied, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "They would like to come home, as would he. But the pol—the Jack makes us all uneasy, cannot be around him."

He felt it instantly as her mind went scaly and orange. "Oh, for God's sake, Connor, why are you acting like such a child? I mean, you could've come back to the flat any time you wanted, but you keep being stupid about this," she said, turning to glare at him, fists planted on her hips.

"The Jack is as twisted wires, digging furrows into my brain, and it makes my brain bleed to be around him. He reeks of yellow and crimson and ozone," Connor murmured, trying to urge her to understand.

"What do you want me to do, then? Chuck him out on the street?" Abby demanded combatively.

He almost said no out of reflex, yet he knew that was exactly what he wanted. He felt sick around the Jack, needles prickling in his belly and making his innards squirm; he would only ever be satisfied if the polecat was sent far away. Connor closed his jaw tightly, watching as she went all metallic in anger.

"You've always hated him, haven't you? You'd be happy if I kicked him out, wouldn't you?" she hissed, not caring that the others were all within earshot and listening despite themselves.

He shook his head. "My emotional state in regards to young Maitland do not extend to such spite—"

"Oh, shut up already, Connor. Or would you prefer _Echo?"_ she sneered the word at him, small hands clenched into furious fists, cheeks flushed red. The past several days, she had been growing increasingly frustrated with her brother's slovenly behaviour in the flat, his constant whinging and complaining, and she had begun to reconsider their living arrangements, yet now she somehow found herself venting all that anger towards Connor instead, words spilling out before she could stop them."He's my brother, I'm not just going to abandon him. Of course, you don't understand what that means, do you? No, of course not, because you and the rest of your whole damned lot are just a pack of bloody _machines!"_ Abby half-shouted.

Connor recoiled as if she had slapped him, letting out a sharp hiss of indrawn breath, blanching beneath his already-pale complexion. Everyone within earshot stopped to stare at her in shock; standing over by the rest of the team, Cutter's gaze snapped around to the fix the petite blond with a look of white-hot fury. The other five members of the Dozen went rigid, glaring. Abby, however, seemed not to notice, still glaring at the young man with rage and disgust. Connor didn't say a word, just backed away from her a few steps. "Professor Cutter…you and the rest of the team may return to the ARC for now," Connor said, voice stiff. "We will remain behind, ensure that no other creatures have escaped." Without waiting for an answer, he turned and strode from the warehouse, the other five trailing after him.

Abby glared at the retreating form of his back until the door closed behind them. "Stupid git," she muttered, then for the first time seemed to notice that everyone else was staring at her. "What?" Nobody replied, just moved away silently towards their separate vehicles. She turned to look at Stephen. _"What?"_ she repeated.

The tracker shook his head slowly, a look of something quite like loathing on his face as he stared at her. "Auburn and russet," he muttered enigmatically, walking away.

As her fury began to cool, Abby felt a little sick with herself, yet she couldn't quite find the will to follow Connor. Taking a deep breath, she hastened to catch up with the rest of the team.

* * *

Hours after the others had left, Connor and his siblings still lingered within the warehouse. The only other creature that'd escaped had been a juvenile Megopteran, one that was easily dispatched, yet he was unwilling to return to the ARC. Returning would've meant seeing the little bird again, and he wasn't sure that he could. She had called him a machine. He didn't want to be a machine. Even thinking about it made him feel as if he might turn inside out with fear and then all his insides would fall out and be lost.

Connor shook his head. God, he didn't even make sense in his own head. Sometimes he felt like screaming with frustration, but that would do nothing than create irritating echoes that snapped and flickered like billiard balls after too hard of a break. Everything was going tangled, thick and sticky like tar in his mind, threads getting knotted and snared within each other, a noose drawing tight around his windpipe. Finally, he pulled off his glove, lifted his arm to his mouth, and bit down on his wrist, the sharp new-penny taste of fresh blood exploding on his tongue. The sharpness of the pain made him gasp, tears coming to his eyes, but it worked. The vivid flare of black and red inside his mind washed away all the clutter, if only for the time being. Like sweeping a floor. Lift the rug of your subconscious, brush all the dirt underneath. Good-bye.

He pulled his glove back on, flexing his hand and feeling the self-repairing agents go to work within him, healing the wound exponentially faster than was normal. The bleeding had already stopped, and it would soon be no more than a silvery ghost scar. With the sharp, icy clarity fresh in his mind, he resolved that he would no longer try to convince the Abby-bird of her kin's treachery. If she refused to see the polecat's teeth, than she would be stung by them.

"There are easier ways to be rid of the problem," suggested Tango Fifteen Iota as he twirled his short sword in one hand. "Disassemble the puzzle and throw the pieces through the doorways. Cannot find evidence if it is scattered across epochs. Treasure buried in the sand."

Connor shook his head. "Cannot disassemble simply because it is unsavoury. Be an empty world if that be the solution," he replied.

They both jerked as the tasted the flare of alarm from India's mind, coursing sharp across the silver cord like a flare. Before either could move to respond, though, a bright yellow sports car went careening through the warehouse; a Megopteran was clutching the vehicle with its claws, hungry thoughts gnawing at them all. Connor instantly recognised the polecat sitting behind the wheel as the car's fender just clipped the edge of the equipment, knocking apart the pieces of the locking device; the doorway sprang open free once more, bolts no longer holding it shut, and the vehicle's uncontrolled trajectory sent it plunging straight through into the future.

They hastened forward, staring at the gateway. "Many threads. Which to follow?" asked Whiskey softly, looking over at Connor for guidance.

Connor paused slightly. There were only half of them here—the other six remained at the ARC—and the team was far away as well. By the time forces arrived, there was highest probability that the polecat would already be dead. He sighed reluctantly. "We will retrieve the parasite before he is devoured," he answered, then looked to Foxtrot. She had the greatest ability of transferring echoes across the silver cord across distance. "Contact the others in the ARC. Tell them to alert the team," he instructed gently, and they all felt the silver cord sing as she opened the channel, allowing their minds to connect. After a few moments of silence, she shivered and gave a nod of confirmation. Connor typed in a string of commands on the locking device so it would close the doorway and bolt it after they had passed through it. "Let's go."

Drawing silver fangs, they stepped forward into the future to rescue the wayward polecat.


	15. On the Side of Angels

The glare of sunlight was harsh and sudden after being in the relative murkiness of the warehouse, and they all stood blinking as their eyes rapidly adjusted to the brilliant glare. Connor felt the shifts in gravity, and he knew without looking behind him that there was nothing behind him save for a sheer drop many hundreds of feet downwards. In front of them lay a large section of city, separated from the rest by deep gorges, a small island without water. There were rows of dilapidated cars, harshly gnawed by rust and time, with grass growing through their floors and across flat tyres. The buildings were in ruin, worn down by the elements until they were only bones, hollow shells of what they once were. They all gasped at the echoes that remained there, rippling echoes of screams and blood and pain that sill reverberated silently around the still air. The air tasted of selenium and ash, gritty on their tongues.

Closing his eyes, he tried to locate the fresher echoes, the ones that were new and not full of pain, searching, but the silent screaming was too painfully loud, drowning out all other sound. He let out a heavy breath. "Damn it," he growled out. "Quickly, now, we find the polecat and go home."

"I do not understand. Why do we rescue the parasite at all when he has done nothing to deserve our assistance?" asked Tango Fifteen Iota as they made their way through the ruined city of the future; he took care to pitch his voice just so that it did not rebound off the buildings and attract unwanted attention. The shadows of death lurked all around; their stench was thick in the echoes, stinking them up like the grabby hands of nightmares.

Connor sighed. "Because the little bird would be much aggrieved if the polecat were to die," he answered. "Believe me, brother, if the parasite were not related to the Abby-bird, he would be left to his own."

"You do this to gain her favour? After what she has done?" queried Quebec.

"No. I do this so she does not suffer." He knew that rescuing Jack would win him no favour with her, being made of scaly and sandpaper, yet he had to rescue the little parasite so his little bird would not suffer its loss. He turned to look at his sister. "Would _you_ not suffer if _I_ were lost?" he asked, and he felt her thoughts wrinkle and turn murky at the prospect. She nodded her understanding.

"Connor," said India. "There." She pointed down a way with her blade, and they turned to look. Towards the far end of a street, a splash of colour against the grimy landscape, a bright orange sports car was parked.

As they approached the vehicle, Connor heard a voice echoing up a shaft down below, _"Help! Someone help me! I'm down 'ere! Help!"_ and paused in his tracks. As he approached, the sound grew louder. The polecat had somehow fallen underground—weasels hid in holes, after all—and was trapped. Injured as well, from the scent of blood that drifted up to his nose. "Jack Maitland," he called down softly.

"Hello? Someone up there? Oi, help me out of 'ere, please!" the parasite called up plaintively.

"You must be quiet," Connor said sharply. "There are creatures here, predators. Be silent or they will find us. We will get you out."

Connor slipped out of his jacket, handing it to Quebec as he stuck his head into the hole, looking downwards. It was at least a seven-metre drop to the ground below. Grasping both edges of the hole to steady himself, he brought his feet through first, braced on arm on either side of the hole to support his weight, then let himself drop. He landed on the balls of his feet, bending his knees to absorb the impact, but the shock still reverberated painfully up his legs.

It stank of paraffin down below, a thick, cloying odour that stuck grey in his mouth. "Oi, over 'ere, mate," the polecat squeaked. "I can't move, me leg's trapped."

Connor straightened up, making his way across the clutter. This was a nest for the Megopterans, where the doting parents brought back corpses for their maggots to feed upon. Had the parasite not been alive when he fell in, they would have already started to dissolve his flesh and suck him dry.

A shaft of dim light fell across his face, and the polecat showed his teeth. "You're that weird bloke from Abby's flat, the crazy one," it said.

"I am the one that's come to save you," Connor answered stiffly. He braced on foot on the heavy piece of debris that trapped the polecat's paw and shoved hard, forcing it to grind backwards a few inches. "Get up." Already, he felt the wires of the leech's yellow nature digging bloody furrows into his brain, metal claws digging into his mind, and the cloying, bitter taste near gagged him. _The things one does for one's little bird,_ he thought to himself.

It took much bullying to get the polecat up the ladder and back outside, whimpering constantly of the pains he felt. "What the hell is that?!" Jack suddenly screeched. One of the death shadows was coming towards them, hissing and growling, showing its long teeth.

Connor reached for his blade, but he felt the polecat grab at his jacket, pulling out his EMD pistol. "Don't—" he gasped, but too late.

The EMD flashed, but the polecat was not used to its calibrations; the shot went wide, ricocheting to and fro off the metal of the building and down into the shaft. The noxious fumes the maggots produced exploded, shockwaves throwing them all off their feet and setting their heads to ringing like church bells, a sepulchral warning tone. Connor groaned, shaking his head to try and remove the chiming, but it was too loud in his mind. "You have alerted every Predator for miles!" he snarled at the parasite. Already he could hear them coming closer and closer.

As he got to his feet, Connor looked up as more of the creatures began appearing. "If you are wise," he said to the polecat as he picked up his knives, "you will stay down. This is going to get quite bloody."

* * *

"The creature is derived from Hymenoptera, which is the same family as bees, wasps, sawflies, and ants," said Cutter as he looked down at the insect pieces laid out on the table.

"That means this thing can sting," Abby added as she stood beside him. "Except in this case, the stinger has evolved into an ovipositor. It lays its eggs inside its victims; human beings would do very nicely."

Standing just beside them, Stephen made a face. "That is disgusting," he muttered. He had a thing about giant insects ever since the incident with the Artheropleurid, but a giant insect that laid eggs inside people? That was an entirely new level of revulsion.

As they were speaking, one of the Dozen, Alpha Nine Sigma, came walking over to them. He was shorter and more compact, with a shock of ginger hair and blue eyes. "Foxtrot called to us," he said softly. "The polecat has fallen through the anomaly."

Abby dropped the scalpel in her hand. "Jack _what?"_

"He has fallen through the anomaly. The others have gone to retrieve him. Foxtrot asks us to come to them," said Alpha.

There were looks of alarm on everyone's faces. The idea of any inexperienced person getting through an anomaly into a hostile future no doubt full of predatory creatures was a terrifying thought indeed, but it was only worse considering that half of the Dozen had gone through after the wayward traveller. "Right, then, Stephen, you take the others and head back to the warehouse. Jenny and I will stay here," said Cutter. "Oi, Quinn. Take the truck. Get there." He tossed the keys to the copper, and the others ran for the doors.

"How could he even find the anomaly?" asked Danny.

"He must've stolen my detector," Abby mumbled.

 _"What?_ That is your responsibility! You've got to keep track of it."

She huffed in irritation. "Can we talk about this later? We need to get to the racetrack."

* * *

The Predators were everywhere. But there weren't just Predators now. The smoke and heat pushed the Megopterans out of their nest, and they swarmed through the air, their wings causing a buzz that hummed through their bones. Caught between two buildings, they couldn't return to the anomaly, not from where they stood. Jack was shoved down into a space between two cars as the rest of the Dozen tried to keep the creatures at bay, trying to keep their focus on each other instead of eating them.

Connor slammed a blade through a Predator's brain, springing out of the way of its claws as he drove the other blade through its heart. As it collapsed the ground, he pulled the blades free and whirled around, turning his attention to the next creature. He felt a wash of silver swarm across his brain, and then he felt a surge of relief as the other six of his siblings came running forward, throwing blades into the melee. "The doorway is open," said Sierra as she drew her sword and whirled on heel, cutting off the head of a Megoptera.

"No—!" India Four Gamma protested as the polecat suddenly bolted out of terror. A juvenile Megoptera slammed into her, clawed feet ripping at her stomach, and they cried out in unison at the shared pain, flaring across the silver cord and setting fires within them. Foxtrot drove her blade through the Megoptera's exoskeleton, driving it off her, but another Predator came scrabbling towards them, drawn by the scent of fresh blood. She slashed at the creature's face, driving it backwards, but not before its claws ripped into her upper thigh, making her let out a silent scream that registered as black and crimson in the cord. Jack scrabbled past them, trying to run through the fight towards the anomaly.

The Predator hissed and lunged for this new, unarmed prey, claws extended. Quebec dove, shoving Jack out of the way and driving one blade into the creature's open mouth. It let out a shriek of pain, claws flashed, and Quebec fell to the ground with a cry. They all cried out as the fiery lash of pain tore across all of them, painting their thoughts scarlet and bloody. "No!" Connor flung his throwing blades at the Predator, the small blades digging into the creature's nerve clusters. He drew his sword and slammed the blade through the back of its neck, cutting straight through its neck and severing its windpipe. As it fell to the ground, gurgling, he knelt beside his sister, carefully lifting her jacket to look at the new injuries in her side. The bleeding was substantial, and she would need medical attention soon.

Tango came to his side. "Connor, we must hasten back to the anomaly. Collect the polecat, I will carry Quebec," he said, lifting the woman's form into his arms.

Connor whirled around; Jack was lying on the ground where Quebec had shoved him, whining about the sprained wrist he'd fallen upon. He seized the polecat by the throat, dragging it up to its feet. He was quite sorely tempted to fling the parasite from the edge of the cliff; it was his fault any of them were in the situation. "Let's go. The gateway closes; you will be silent, or I will cut your tongue out myself," he snarled, unable to keep the jagged spikes of crimson out of his voice.

The pest went all chalky and grey with fear, bobbing his head.

Keeping one hand fisted upon the polecat's scruff, Connor led them back towards the anomaly, hearing its crystalline notes grow louder over the thunderous pounding in his ears; the back of his neck prickled in sudden awareness, and he twisted his head around. There, in the gloom of a nearby building, he saw a set of eyes glowing from the darkness, shining metallic green-orange-silver. Like an animal. But as soon as he looked upon them, they vanished, disappearing. As they approached the gateway, he spoke in low tones, "When we return, you will say nothing of our conversation to the Abby-bird, and you will give yourself up to the Captain to be punished as seen fit." Jack opened his mouth to protest, but Connor tightened his grip on its scruff, meeting its cold eyes with his own. "Know this, Jack Maitland. Simply because I am on the side of angels does not mean that I am one. I would cut you apart and feed you to the creatures myself, and rest sound knowing that the world was less one more parasite. Do not tempt me any further to do so."

The polecat, wisely, closed its mouth.

* * *

As the Hilux pulled up, disgorging Danny, Abby, Becker, and Sarah, the warehouse door opened, and Stephen came running out to meet them, having gotten there faster on his motorcycle. "Sierra unlocked the anomaly, and the rest of the Dozen have already gone through it," said the tracker quickly, breathless. They walked back into the warehouse, and the anomaly was still open, glittering serenely. "I wanted to go with, but they told me to wait. Said you lot needed to wait for them to get back, too."

Flushed and irritated, Abby shook her head furiously. "No. He's my brother. I'm going to get him," she snapped.

"Abby, we can't just run off," Stephen protested, grabbing the blond by the arm before she could approach the anomaly. "We don't know what the hell's on the other side. What if there's a whole bloody nest of those insects? The Dozen know what they're doing, they'll handle this," he said.

"You do what you want. I'm getting my brother back," she hissed back and yanked her arm out of his grip. Before she could take more than a step towards the anomaly, though, it began to warp and distort.

"Something's coming through," cautioned Becker, grabbing his shotgun. Stephen raised his rifle, as did Danny; Abby and Sarah backed away from the anomaly.

Alpha, Sierra, November, and Bravo came striding through the temporal gateway first, smudged in dust and grit and blood. "Lower your weapons," ordered November sharply; the three men hastily lowered their guns as the rest of the Dozen came walking through. Foxtrot could barely walk on her own, held up by Whiskey, and Lima and Zulu were supporting India between them.

"Quebec," Stephen gasped as Tango came through carrying the young woman in both arms. Her face was ashen, breathing in shallow pants, and the fabric of her coat glistened wetly with fresh blood that left a splattered trail behind them. "What happened?" he asked, hurrying over to them.

"Predator," Tango answered. "Massive blood loss. Falling into shock quickly. She needs medical attention at once or she will not survive. Approximately seventeen minutes remain until she passes beyond point of resuscitation."

"C'mon, there's a clinic nearby. I'll drive," Stephen said; Danny tossed him the keys.

Stunned, Abby looked back at the anomaly just as Connor walked through, the last of the Dozen…and he was dragging Jack along by the collar. The look on her former flatmate's face was, in a word, terrifying. Never in her life had she ever seen him look so pissed. No, that went beyond pissed. He was _livid._ Connor's gaze fell on her, and she shivered at the look in his eyes. He strode over, still dragging Jack along by the collar like a dog, and flung her brother to the ground at her feet like he weighed no more than a doll full of sawdust. "She is owed, and she is repaid. Their blood for hers. She will ask no more of him," he spat, then turned and strode away, sprinting after the others.

Becker, Danny, and Sarah all looked over at her, their eyes full of silent accusation. "Right about now, if I had to pick between a person like Jack and those 'machines,' as you called them, Abby…I think I'd go with the machines," said Becker softly.

* * *

After the anomaly had been taken care of and the racetrack secured, Abby made her way to the clinic where the injured members of the Dozen had been taken, as well as her brother. Jack had turned up a sprained wrist, a few minor lacerations on his ankle, and bruised ribs, but no worse for wear. India's stomach required 40 stitches to close up, and Foxtrot's thigh had needed 37, not to mention a small blood transfusion to replace the volume she'd lost. Quebec had come out worst, though. The Predator that'd attacked her had raked its claws over her side, laying her open down to the bone, cracking two ribs, and puncturing her lung.

When she walked into Quebec's room—she figured it's where Connor would be—she was surprised to find Stephen there instead. He was sitting in the chair beside the other Temple's bed, watching the dark-haired girl sleep with an expression that could almost be called...not quite protectiveness, but more like... _possessiveness._ Quebec was curled up on her unhurt side, looking quite strange in a hospital gown instead of her usual all-black femme fatale uniform, and fast asleep. "Where's Connor?" Abby asked softly. "I thought he'd be here."

Glancing over at her with an icy look in his blue eyes, Stephen stood up and walked around the cot to stand beside her. "He came to see her right after she got out of surgery, made sure she was alright. He left after that, said he didn't want all the red and sandpaper in his thoughts to wake her up," he replied, either not noticing or not caring how strange those words sounded.

"Oh." Abby pushed her hands in her pockets, chewing on her lip as she thought about what to say next. "I wanted to talk to him 'bout...few things," she mumbled.

Stephen shook his head. "God, you just don't get it, do you, Abby?" he asked, practically spitting the words with venom, voice low and intense, shoving both hands back through his short hair in irritation. "It was _Connor_ who took the Dozen through the anomaly to save Jack, because he knew you'd be hurt if he died. The pack of bloody machines you seem to hate so much went into the future, into a city full of Predators, to save that smarmy little rat, even though they had no reason to. Why would they? They don't know Jack. Never met him, never heard about him, never had any reason to care whether or not he lived or died in that place. And you're right. Connor _does_ hate Jack. He thinks that he's a two-timing, slimy little punk that would leave you behind if he thought it'd save his own skin. And to be honest, _Abigail,_ I'm quite inclined to agree. I talked to Jack earlier. He didn't give a flying fuck about what happened to Quebec, even though she nearly _died_ to save his arse. He didn't give a goddamn about any of them, just sat there moaning about all the pain he was in, saying that he was so scared, wondering why it took so long for them to save him. When I told him that Quebec came _that_ close to dying, he looked at me and said, 'So what?'" Stephen hissed, his voice low and furious. "Do you get it now? Connor nearly lost his sister, the only family he has, to save someone he hates, just so _you_ wouldn't be hurt. You called him a machine, but from where I'm standing, he's got more of a conscience than that rat and a hell of a lot more compassion than you." He slid past her and stormed out of the room, barely resisting the urge to slam the door behind him in frustration.

Abby stood there for a moment, arms wrapped around herself, biting her lip. She slowly made her way down the hall, Stephen's words echoing in her head, until she walked past an empty room and noticed a black-clad figure lurking near the window—Connor. She glanced up at him through her lashes. He was standing near the window with arms folded across his chest, staring outside at the rain and watching the water run in rivulets down the windowpanes. The odd patterns of shadow-light fell across his face, shifting across his pale features. He didn't look at her, but she knew that he was aware of her presence. "Why?" she asked softly. "Why did you go to save Jack?"

"Because of you," he replied, his voice deceptively soft.

She gave an awkward little half-chuckle. "I'd think you hate me by now," she admitted.

Connor didn't move from where he stood, watching the rain trickle down the glass. "Hate? No. Bitterness is a paralytic. Love is a much more vicious motivator."

Abby shuddered, feeling herself crumple. "Oh, God, Conn, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I was so stupid," she said, her voice cracking as she felt her eyes prickle with tears. "All those horrible things I said, I—I'm so sorry." She put a hand over her mouth, a sob hitching in her chest. She didn't hear him move, but then warm, strong arms wrapped around her, drawing her against his chest. Fingers clutching at his shirt, she buried her face into the hollow of his shoulder and shuddered against him; he said nothing, just stroked her short hair and held her tight. "Jack's moving out," she whispered hoarsely, voice slightly muffled by the fabric of his jacket. "Come home, Conn. Please. Come home."

He rested his cheek against her hair, feeling the soft blond spikes tickle at his skin in a most pleasant, featherlike manner. "I will."


	16. Stormbreak

Quebec had been injured many times. In the Complex, it had been vital to her construction. Fire and agony had been used to reshape her to the mold the spider of doors wanted her to fit. The spidersilk puppets had been there with fingers that were made of shiny metal, every touch cutting into her flesh, steel teeth biting her to bits so she would grow strong. They had cut away all the soft tissue of the Manticore until only the steel core remained. The silver cord had only furthered that process, allowing her to share in the pain of all her fellows. It was meant to be that way—they were meant to move as one, breathe as one, suffer as one. She was not allowed to tend to the others, nor were they allowed to tend to her. Pain was a part of their lives that had to be endured.

Which is why it felt so strange when she woke up to find that her side was already bandaged and stitched, and when she breathed, she felt the foreign presence of stitches within her body, closing up the tear in the lower quadrant of her lung. But her head felt very far from her feet, and her entire body felt liquid and heavy, full of pleasant, tingly numbness. It was alarming as well. Everything in her mind was all twisted in loops and whorls, no sense of pattern or order. She was already crazy, she didn't need anyone to make it any worse. The worst part was that she could not feel her brother. The silver cord had been thinned away to the barest filament, and she could not find the ability to draw it back to her. She could not feel Connor, nor could she feel Foxtrot or India or November or Whiskey or Zulu, none of her siblings.

Her breath began coming faster, heart increasing its speed so as to stimulate blood flow and get more oxygen to her muscles. As tendrils of auburn-dandelion-ruby began streaking through her thoughts, a soft voice spoke, a low curl of silvery-blue. "Quebec?"

"Stephen," she mumbled back, her tongue feeling all thick and sticky in her mouth, like she'd taken a spoonful of tar instead of honey. "Stephen Hart. Hart and not Heart, makes him a Stephen deer instead of a Stephen dear. Makes one wonder what he's a-hunting if he's a hunted hart."

"I take it the morphine is working then," he said with a low chuckle.

Her lashes felt heavy, so she did not bother trying to lift weights when it was perfectly acceptable to let them rest where they did. But her fingers twitched, seeking to grasp what was not there, despite the tacky drugs that tried to keep them stuck. A warmth enveloped her fingers, callused and rough, yet holding gently. She could not remember how many muscles it took to smile, and her expression remained still. "Not morphine. Just me. Still very crazy, y'know."

"Yeah, I know." The cot beneath her shifted, whispering as it adjusted to the weight of another body that was approximately 18.9 kilograms heavier than herself. "Next time some git falls through an anomaly, wait until there's more than just six of you to play search-and-rescue, okay?"

Quebec grunted. "Would have been eaten had they waited." She decided to lift weights just this once to open one eye, looking up at him. He seemed very tall from where she lay, but only because she was prone and he was upright. Well, even if she were to be vertical, he would still be taller. "Did the polecat survive?"

A small frown creased his features. "You know he survived; you brought him back."

She shook her head as best she could. "Knew he survived death shadows and wasp from hell. Did not know if he survived mine own kin. Little brother was very much crimson and metallic, very streaky," she elaborated.

Stephen laughed, a sound that made her feel its viridian tones all the way down in her toes, which was quite a distance from her mind. "Connor didn't kill him," he reassured. "I thought he might, though, and I kind of want to." This time he was not joking, a harsh vinegar taste coming to his words.

She did not like the sour flavour the words carried, nor did she like their rubicund sound; she patted his hand with one of her own, noticing idly how very small and pale it seemed in comparison to his, which were large and tanned. But both were strong. He could loosen teeth with a single punch, but she could paralyse with a sharp jab to the proper nerve cluster. It made them even. "The tortoise kills the polecat. The little bird kills the tortoise," she reminded him patiently. "Not the optimal outcome."

"I am _not_ a tortoise!" he protested vehemently, yet he did not release her hand.

Quebec remembered which muscles to use now, so she smiled at him. "Are too. Hard and tough on outside with long claws to defend oneself with, but soft and warm on inside. Big and strong and wise."

"I'm not soft, either," he grumbled.

The words held no weight with her, as his growling had turned to a reluctant purr of contentment. He liked it when she called him a tortoise, though he would not admit it to himself; it made him turn all curly and burgundy on the inside. Tentatively, she reached out towards him in ways that were not physical. It was still there. At first, she thought she had only been imagining it, but it was still there. Stephen was afraid of threads. He did not like their constriction and feared the responsibility and pain that came with them; he had felt more than one thread turn to a noose around his throat, including the one with the spider of doors, so now he shied away from them. There was only one thread that he maintained at all—the finest filament that connected himself to his mother, who lay many miles away. But now there was a thin, cobwebby little strand that connected Quebec to him. It might grow into a thread, if he was left unaware of his presence, because then he would try to sever it as soon as possible. She did not want that to happen. For now the little strand would have to be her own little secret, a treasure of her own buried in the sand. Stephen could not see it, or he would draw into his stony shell and she would not find him again. And Connor could not see it, either, because then he would turn all crimson and metallic again. It would just have to stay her secret for now.

His mobile rang, humming insistently so they would be forced to notice its message; Quebec wanted to defenestrate the infernal little device for ruining the pleasant jade silence of the room. Stephen sighed in echoed irritation. "Lester wants us back in the ARC," he muttered.

She knew he was torn between wanting to go and wanting to stay, so she patted his hand once more. "Go. Tortoise is needed, and I am well-managed," she urged, retracting her hand. When he did not move, she used one knee to nudge the small of his back, urging him off the cot.

Stephen rose to his feet, and suddenly looked very much taller than her. "Alright, I'm going." He started to leave and paused. "You, uhm...you'll be alright," he said, glancing back at her, then grabbed his jacket and left the room.

Quebec pressed her face into the cotton-polyester of the pillows to hide her smile. _And he says that he is not soft._

* * *

It was several days before all twelve members of the Dozen were back in fighting shape. It was still amazing, how quickly their bodies recuperated after injuries that would have incapacitated a normal person for weeks. The medics were still trying to understand it, and it seemed unlikely that they would ever manage to figure it out entirely.

Things had returned to some semblance of normalcy within the ARC. Well, as close to normal as any of them could possibly get, being dinosaur wranglers and, for a few of them, genetically engineered not-quite-humans. The moment he was well enough to be discharged from the clinic, Abby had made Jack move out of the flat, despite his whinging, trying to play on the "we're family" angle. She could barely believe she hadn't seen his selfish nature before. What'd finally convinced him to leave, though, was when Connor had taken out one of his knives and idly began balancing it on his fingertips. It appeared a casual motion, but Jack had gone ashen at the sight and meekly agreed to have his stuff moved out by the next day. Once he'd moved out as promised, Sid, Nancy, Rex, and Connor returned to the flat. Abby realised that Connor really hadn't been joking when he said her pets didn't like Jack; the little creatures were more at ease without her brother around than they had been since he moved in.

Whilst the team were still unsure of what was going on between Jenny and Cutter, it was quite clear that whatever issue that laid between them had been resolved as well. The team, at least, was unsure; the Dozen seemed fully aware of...whatever it was, and would smile in that strange, calm way of theirs. Lester was relieved; now he wouldn't have to put up with the paperwork required to put them all on temporary leave. Of course, there was the silent threat of Helen still lurking overhead like a malevolent shadow, and they were all starting to wonder just when the storm would break.

Of course, as it turned out, they didn't have to wonder very long.

* * *

Their next anomaly was a hell of a challenge, even for them: an entire herd of massive Embolotherums, rhinoceros-like creatures that'd trampled an entire campground into dust on their stampede back into the anomaly. Cutter shook his head with a fond smile as he made his way across the ruined campground, wondering just how Lester would explain this one all away. Perhaps a rare species of rhino that'd escaped a private zoo. Plausible. As he stepped over another trampled tent, the wind shifted slightly, blowing directly into his face; the raw, overwhelming scent of the creatures stood out above all, mingling with the scent of crushed grass and churned-up soil, along with fire smoke and tent polyester, but another scent laid underneath it—raw meat and blood and metal. Cutter's head snapped up, and he barely had the chance to growl before a hybrid suddenly sprang out from behind an overturned ATV, catching him low in the stomach and driving him hard to his back. He slammed one foot into the hybrid's stomach, throwing it off him and onto its back; twisting around to his feet, he found himself face-to-face with the hybrid.

A man, around Stephen's age, with a mop of coarse red hair, faced him. Cutter realised with a jolt that this was one of the canine hybrids—if the lean, angular features, the sharpened canines, and the slightly pointed ears hadn't given it away, the man's eyes would have. Instead of any natural colour, the hybrid's eyes were luminous, glowing gold. Not that strange shade of light hazel-brown but actually gold. Like the eyes of a wolf.

 _Oh, damn,_ Cutter thought as he saw more of the canine hybrids come forward. _Wolves travel in packs. Of course._ He counted six hybrids. Not good. He might be stronger and faster than they were, but they still had superior numbers. Which meant he was so very _boned._ Still, he felt the animal in him stirring, blood running faster as he slowly curled and uncurled his fingers, feeling his claws extend.

"Down, boy," sneered a cold, all-too-familiar voice, and a ferocious snarl ripped its way up his throat as Helen walked forward. She snapped her fingers sharply, and the canine hybrids straightened up from their battle-ready crouches, hands clasped behind them like soldiers at attention. "Well, well, well, Nick. I must say that I'm surprised," she said. "I honestly thought you'd have lost it by now and one of the others would've put you down."

"What do you want?" he snarled, aware that his voice sounded demented, layered with animalistic growling.

Helen smiled at him, but it wasn't really a smile. Cutter had learnt a long time ago what a predator's show of teeth meant. "You have something of mine. I want it back," she replied.

"You're not getting the hybrids."

She tilted her head in confusion. "The hybrids?" she echoed, then seemed to nod in realisation. "Oh, you mean those couple felids you managed to get away with. I don't care about those. You can keep them if you wish; good luck keeping the muzzle on them, though," she chortled, waving a hand dismissively, as if she was doing no more than brushing away a pestering fly. "No, Nick, I mean my little prodigies. My protégés, so to speak. The Deadly Dozen."

Air escaped his lungs as a ferocious hiss spitting through his clenched teeth, the sound as threatening as a swarm of bees. "Never. They're not going anywhere with you, either. Connor wouldn't allow it, and neither would I," he ground out.

Helen tilted her head at him again. "You make this sound as if I'm asking," she said. "Nick, I don't think you fully understand the repercussions. The Dozen are incomplete. Their programming was never finished."

"They're getting on just fine without it," he answered.

"For now," she cautioned. "But it won't last. A car engine will run for awhile without a few parts, but sooner or later, it will break down. It's inevitable. Except that when _they_ break down, there isn't going to be some black smoke and calling greenflag. They're going to start killing people. I assume you've seen what happens when they're triggered?" she queried, and he gave a reluctant nod. "That's was only a subroutine, Nick. Imagine what will happen when the actual programme is activated. There isn't going to be any stopping them, then. They're like the Energizer Bunnies from hell. They will keep going, keep killing, either until they reach their preset kill limit or they're killed themselves. I'm talking about a full-on massacre, Nick," she said, a note of true urgency coming to her voice.

Cutter caught whiff of a new trace within her scent, something that was sharp and spicy and somewhat sour. When he realised what it was, his mouth went dry. "You're afraid of them," he said softly, unable to hide the disbelief in his voice.

Helen met his eye directly and nodded sharply. "I am. And I'm hopeful that you know me well enough to understand that _I am not joking."_

He didn't want to admit it, but he knew that she wasn't. Helen didn't like to show nerves, and she was a hell of a good actress when need be, but there was no mistaking the scent of fear, no way to possibly imitate that kind of reaction. She wasn't just afraid—she was _terrified._ He shook his head stubbornly. "No. They'll fight it. Connor fought it once already. He beat the programming. He can do it again," he protested.

If she was surprised to hear that Connor had managed to overcome the mental conditioning, she didn't show it. "No, they won't," she protested softly. "I told you, Nick. That was only a minor subroutine. It wasn't the real thing. The subroutines can be overridden, but the actual _programme?_ There's only one way to deactivate that one," she said, then drew a finger across her throat. "That's all there is to it. It can't be helped."

Cutter felt a dreadful sinking in the pit of his stomach, a terrible feeling that said she wasn't lying. That she was actually telling the truth. "Then what do you suggest?" he demanded, slightly desperate. "They won't go with you, Helen."

"You have to find a way to make them, Nick," she answered. "Either that, or they will end up killing you and all the rest of your team and dozens, perhaps hundreds of other people."

"Finishing their programming, it'll turn them into _that,"_ he snapped, pointing at the canine hybrids who still stood at attention, expressions completely blank. No free will at all.

Helen glanced over at the hybrids. "I know," she murmured softly.

The realisation struck him hard, like a physical blow to the stomach, and he took a half-step back as if it had struck him. "My God, you did this on purpose. That was your plan all along, wasn't it?" he gasped out, shaking his head. "You made it this way so that they would either have to finish their programming or die. No-win scenario for everyone...except for you. Either way, _you_ still come out on top. Jesus, Helen, what have you _done?"_

Her eyes went back to his, and this time they were hard and cold, full of her own icy determination. "I've won," she replied.

A new emotion suddenly bubbled up from within him, a depth of feeling that he'd never experienced before—fury. White-hot outrage. His vision took on a strange reddish tint, and his tongue tasted of burning metal. Suddenly he didn't even feel like a person. He felt like a being made of glass, filling up with a scarlet, incandescent liquid. His entire _body_ burned with the need to suddenly rip this woman apart with his bare hands. Through his red-tinted spectrum, he saw Helen's eyes grow wide, and the scent of her fear spiked in the air. A snarling, animal roar built in him and burst from his mouth as he lunged towards her, claws extended to rip her into bloody ribbons.

"Stop him!" she cried, and then the canine hybrids were on him, all six of them moving in unison to try and restrain them. Cutter ripped the throat from the first one, snapping the neck of the second. If they injured him, he didn't acknowledge it; he was beyond pain. The taste of blood exploded in his mouth, spurring him on further. Out the corner of his eye, he saw an anomaly spring into existence, and Helen was backing into it. She was getting away. He renewed his efforts to get at her, but the canids that still lived were resisting with single-minded determination. "Think about what I said, Nick," she called, her voice barely heard over the thundering pulse in his ears. "It's either I finish their programming, or they kill everyone you ever cared about. Unless you kill them first." She disappeared through the anomaly, and it snapped closed behind her.

Cutter let out an inhuman, wordless scream of fury.

* * *

When the rest of the team found him, he was kneeling in the blood-slick grass, the bodies of six canid hybrids sprawled around him. His arms were coated in blood to the elbow. It stained his clothes, strings of it in his hair, and painted his face with streaks of gruesome red. A terrifying sight, yet somehow even worse for the fact that the professor was letting out a low, keening moan, an animalistic whine of pain slipping from between his teeth. It was a horrible sound, one that made all of them feel ill.

Jenny was first to step forward, her shoes slipping slightly on the bloodied grass; the raw, heavy copper stench of it made her stomach churn. Carefully, she knelt in front of the professor, reaching out to just touch her fingertips to his shoulder. "Nick?" she said hesitantly. "What happened?"

"The Dozen," he moaned weakly, his voice so pained and lost that she felt the words twist in her chest. "She's going to kill the Dozen. They're going to die."


	17. Overlord Protocol

"What do you mean, they're going to die? Nick?" she asked, pushing his hair out of his face, trying to ignore the sticky strings of blood that clung to her fingers. "Nick?" He only let out another low groan, a shudder rippling through his frame as he bowed his head. Jenny bit her lip, pulling him in close so his head was pressed to her shoulder. He clutched at her jacket, and his hands left bloody prints on the fabric. "C'mon, let's get you back to the ARC," she murmured. She rose to her feet and pulled him up with her, keeping one arm wrapped around his waist for support as he wobbled unsteadily, barely able to walk straight on his own. "Stephen, I-I—" she tried to say.

The tracker nodded, giving her an understanding look. "Take him back. We'll handle this," he told her, and she nodded gratefully before leading her ragged professor back to the truck. He was limping, and she had the feeling that before day's end he would be black-and-blue from head to toe.

Cutter had ceased to make that terrible, heart-wrenching sound, but now he whined low in his throat, almost subvocally. He refused to let go of her entirely, clutching at her arm like a lifeline, as if keeping contact with her was the only way to keep himself grounded. Jenny didn't know what had happened back there, but a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach said that it definitely wasn't anything good.

* * *

"It's a lie."

Stephen's voice was the first to break the silence after Cutter explained everything that Helen had told him at the campground. He had both arms crossed tight across his chest, jaw set and eyes stony. He wasn't just upset. He was _mad._ Quebec, sitting in a chair beside where he stood, reached up with one hand to touch his sleeve. All around the room, the rest of the Dozen looked just as stunned. Whiskey clasped Foxtrot tight to him, her back to his chest, arms around her waist, and India was holding onto Tango's arm. Zulu grasped November and Alpha by the hands; Bravo had one arm around Sierra, and with his other arm, he held Lima's hand. Connor sat in a chair with Abby standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders. They all looked pale and uneasy, horrified at the prospect of becoming what Helen described.

"It's a lie," Stephen repeated stubbornly. "She was lying, trying to get a rise out of us, trying to mess with our heads."

Cutter shook his head, feeling sick down to his stomach even saying it. "She wasn't. Stephen, you weren't there. She was…she wasn't kidding," he murmured out. "I could smell her fear. She was afraid, terrified, of them, of what would happen. She wasn't kidding."

Connor slowly reached up to cover Abby's hands with his own, dark eyes staring straight ahead. "Overlord Protocol," he whispered, so softly it was almost inaudible.

"Eh?" Cutter asked, the only one able to hear him. "What's that, Connor?"

"Overlord Protocol," the young man repeated, and the rest of the Dozen shifted uneasily at the sound of it. "The spider inlaid a failsafe, so if we were to break our binds we would still be hers. If we go too long as incomplete, Overlord Protocol engages. Programming is automatically triggered. It swallows our thoughts, and we become as marionettes once more. We continue to kill until either until we are killed or until the bloodlust is sated. The protocol then shorts out all wiring—control, alt, delete. Total shutdown of all systems. Game over."

"It kills you," Cutter said in a low, hoarse voice. "That's what she meant. You keep going until you reach some preset kill limit, and then her programming fries your brain and kills you."

"Affirmative." It was a single word that all twelve voices whispered in perfect unison, ringing in the following silence of the room. It was the reverberation after the final toll of a funereal bell, it seemed, and they all shivered to hear it.

Abby leant forward to bury her nose against Connor's dark hair, her arms sliding around him. "There has to be a way to fix it, Conn. We...we can't just let this happen. There's got to be _something_ that we can do," she murmured insistently.

He didn't answer her, but there was that strange shifting in the air, a sense of silent _transferrence_ that passed between the members of the Dozen as they sat perfectly still, eyes vacant as they stared straight ahead at nothing. Nobody else in the room could even begin to guess what was going through their strange, brilliant minds, but they only hoped that it would turn out an answer that didn't require anyone to die. After a moment, Connor's lashes fluttered closed as he shook his head. "Nothing. Overlord Protocol cannot be overrun. It is the base of the pyramid, cannot be removed without the collapse of the entire structure," he murmured softly. "The spider has woven her web, and we are helpless within its centre, surrounded on all sides by adhesive silk. To touch is to become stuck, trapped within her patterns." He shoved both hands back through his hair, clenching around the black strands and pulling at the roots, eyes tight closed. "She has cheated, triggered tic-tac-toe scenario in which there is no winner other than her."

Standing beside Cutter with hand on his back, Jenny bit her lip, twisting a stray curl of her hair about her fingers thoughtfully. "How much time do we have? Do you know?" she asked.

Whiskey shook his head, dark curls sliding to partially obscure his face. "Could be as chain reaction, building over time. Could be as lightning strike, sudden discharge," he murmured back.

Danny, standing off to the side with Sarah lurking near his elbow, turned his gaze upon the Dozen, eyes narrowed slightly. "Lemme get this straight, then," he said. "You're telling me that at any moment, you lot could snap and become a bunch of mindless killing machines?"

The taller man's pale silvery eyes shifted over to the copper. "Yes."

"Then maybe you ought not be here." When everyone in the room other than the Dozen let out a sound of protest, Danny held up both hands harmlessly. "Look, mates, I know it's not the best suggestion, but it sounds like the safest one to me. I dunno about you lot, but I wouldn't wanna work around a lot that could, at any moment, go through some psychotic breakdown. We all saw what happened last time that happened. They took out half the security team on their own, and those blokes were bloody Special Forces soldiers. What chance would _we_ have if they suddenly went psycho-killer again?"

The rest of the team looked ready to argue that point, but Connor spoke up softly. "Danny is right. We are not safe."

Abby hastily stepped around the chair to stand in front of him, reaching out to gently hold his face between both hands. "Connor, you leaving is not an option, okay?" she said firmly, blue eyes meeting black with fiery determination. "I don't care what might happen, but you lot aren't going anywhere. We are going to find a way to fix this." She had been without him for a year when he was missing, and then there had been weeks of conflict between the two of them that'd only just been settled. Now that everything was back the way it was supposed to be, she had absolutely no intention of losing him, and especially not to a heartless bitch like Helen. She wasn't sure what they would have to do in order to get everything put back right with the Dozen, but they for damned sure weren't just going to up and leave.

The student gave her that soft, tiny smile that suggested he knew far more than he ever let on, tilting his head against her hand. "The little bird is a stubborn one, but there is no cheating one's fate. Or one's programming," he said softly.

"Look, we've all had a long day, alright?" Jenny said, rising to her feet. "Let's everyone just...go home for now. We'll figure this out after we've all had some rest."

* * *

Jenny gently ran the damp cloth along the back of Cutter's shoulders, taking care not to apply any pressure on the bruises that were already darkening his skin. He sat perfectly still and unflinching, head bowed forward as she cleaned the blood and grit off his skin, removing the last lingering traces of his fight with the canine hybrids that'd showed up earlier. She'd already washed the blood out of his hair, and he'd changed into clean clothes as well. Neither of them had said much during the drive home, and neither were saying much now. She didn't know exactly what Helen had said or done, but she knew that it must have been something truly terrible to have shaken her professor this way. She lightly ran one hand over his bare back, smoothing down his spine before moving back up, resting her forehead against his shoulder. "Nick?"

He shook his head mutely.

Wise enough not to push him, she only slid her arms around him, eyes closed; she could feel a fine trembling running through his body, a shiver that crawled across his skin and gave away just how frightened he truly was. Cutter loved Connor like a son, and she knew that losing him a second time would probably shatter him in ways that would never be healed. Jenny was afraid too, and for more reasons than one. She had seen the destruction that the Dozen were capable of wreaking. She trusted them completely and knew that they wouldn't hurt another person except in direct defence of themselves or someone else, but she knew that if everything that'd been said about their mental programming was true, then they wouldn't have a choice. They wouldn't be themselves, just some mindless automatons that could only obey the orders given to them, much like Helen's eerie clones yet a hell of a lot deadlier.

"What are we going to do, Jenny?" he asked in a low, hoarse voice, head still bowed. "What are we going to do? I can't..." He shook his head. "I can't lose him again, not like this."

She pressed a kiss against his shoulder, allowing him to lean against her. "You won't, Nick. We're going to solve this. I dunno how yet, but you have to trust me. We're not going to let this beat us, not after everything we've been through already," she murmured softly. "We're going to get through this." _I just wish that I knew how._

* * *

Stephen had gradually come to notice that whenever any one of the Dozen became particularly aggravated or upset, they had a knack for finding the most unusual places to hide. Bravo Three Epsilon had found an unoccupied broom cupboard on the third floor. Whiskey had an air vent he liked to occupy. November would sometimes be found beneath the table in the armoury. Even Connor had a place he liked to hide—there was an empty space behind a loose panel in the central hub he would curl up in. And Quebec showed particular favour for a space, a metre or so square, to be found behind a vent panel in an unoccupied office on the second floor. After everyone had split up and gone their separate ways, that was the first place he went to look for her.

The panel was quiet. Too quiet. If it had been empty, then there would have been a faint, soft little echo that bounced back off the empty spaces. If there wasn't an echo, then it followed that the space was full of something, the likeliest thing being small crazy person. He crouched on his heels beside the vent panel. "D'you wanna come out?" he asked softly. Simply _demanding_ something of the Dozen didn't work too well. In fact, it seemed to spark slightly-childish defiance that involved enough stubbornness to drive the hardest SAS up the wall.

Silence.

He reached up to rub the back of his neck. "Y'know that Cutter isn't gonna let anything happen to you lot, right? Neither will Connor. Seeing as how Connor and Cutter are involved, you know that Jenny and Abby are too, so... We're not going to let her win."

"Infants are born innocent. They come into the world unknowing yet aware."

He frowned slightly. Sure he'd been getting better at understanding the language of crazy the Dozen spoke, but this was out there even for him. "I s'pose so..."

"But they do not come from thin air. They are constructed, cell by cell, piece by piece, like tiny robots made from meat instead of steel."

The idea of meat-robots was a disturbing one, especially in an already-strange conversation. "As far as I know, that's how it's always been done."

"How do they know how to be human? How do they go from being a construct of assembled cells and tissues to human beings with thoughts and emotions and actions?" Quebec sounded as if she had been crying, and the thought twisted sharply in a place that Stephen hadn't felt anything in for a long time.

"I dunno, Q. They just...do," he answered; to be honest, he'd never given it a moment's thought, but she seemed to think about _everything._ There wasn't a thought in the world that seemed to escape her keen young mind.

"I was a baby once. So was little brother. So was Whiskey and Foxtrot and November and all the others. We were people then, even though we did not know it, without language or self-determination. We simply _were."_ She sounded as if her heart had been broken. "But then the spider cut us open, took out our pieces and twisted them to a shape that suited her purpose. We have lost it, amidst the blood and sticky pink bits that stain the edges of her claws."

Stephen hated it when she talked about things like that, especially when she said them in that sweet, girlish voice that didn't have any business saying such horrible things. "Cutter told us that the scientists in the Complex place cut open your brains and...did things," he murmured at last.

"My consciousness extends beyond parametres of self. It is maddening. I hear and see and smell and taste and feel things that are not mine own, and the overload of input causes my wires to frazzle." She sighed, low and soft, and he heard the soft rustling as she moved around a little in the space. "I am not a person anymore. I'm not real. I forgot how to be, and I cannot remember how to be again. I am a construct that is only a facsimile of a girl, muscle and bone instead of steel and cord, with blood instead of oil."

"You are a girl, Quebec," Stephen said. Crouching like this was starting to make his legs feel numb, so he sat down on the cheap office carpeting, back to the wall just beside her vent panel; one hand reached out to lightly touch the smooth metal. "That is all a bunch of shite, hear me? You are a crazy, pain-in-the-arse, super-intelligent, bizarre little pest that could drive just about anyone up the wall, which is how I know you are definitely a girl. You aren't a machine. None of you are."

The panel shifted, opened, and Quebec slithered on out, pushing it closed again as she sat beside him. "You think I am a girl. You believe me crazy and annoying and strange, but you always think of me as a girl," she said softly.

"Because you _are,"_ he insisted, gently nudging her with one elbow. "So no more talking about constructs and meat-robots, okay? We're gonna figure out what to do about this whole...programming thing."

"Overlord Protocol," she corrected.

"Whatever the hell it is. We'll find a way to fix it. Too damned stubborn to do anything else."

Quebec leant her head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. "There is a way to cancel out Overlord Protocol yet not turn over to the spider to bind," she murmured, and Stephen looked over at her in surprise. She reached down and pulled out one of the thin, slender blades tucked in her boot, slowly turning it over in her hands; the blade reflected the light in splashes of pale silver light. "Cut the threads. Sever them clean, and she will be forced to start anew. Exchange twelve for hundreds. The team would survive. The centre will hold, and the spider will not win. Protocol cannot be carried out if the machine is shut down permanently," she murmured, staring at the slender knife blade with a vacant, thoughtful expression.

An icy chill ran down his back when he realised what she was talking about. Stephen hastily reached out, closing his hand around her much smaller one, still wrapped around the knife hilt; she turned her head to look at him, surprised, as if she had forgotten he was there. "That is _not_ an option," he said raggedly. "Don't you ever even think about that again, hear me? I'm serious, Quebec." The idea that she would take her own life scared him in ways that he didn't even comprehend. He wasn't even sure what he would do without her or Connor or the rest of the Dozen that had somehow become as much a part of his extended family as the ARC team.

She gently pulled her hand from his and pushed the knife back into her boot. "Merely exploring all strings of possibility."

"Yeah, well, you can get rid of that string right now. You aren't dying, and neither is your crazy brother or any of the others. Understand?"

Much to his surprise, she gave him a crooked, one-dimpled smile that scrunched up her nose in a way that was most definitely adorable. "She understands. I like you," she said, surprising him a little further; he couldn't ever recall anyone saying aloud that they actually liked him. "You say things clear, like strings of stones in my head that cannot be lost." Quebec inched a little closer and laid her head on his shoulder. "She will not consider the severed thread again. It would make the stone tortoise turn all grey and tangled, and that cannot be abided. We will find another thread."

Stephen nodded slowly. "Good," he murmured back.

* * *

Abby didn't know what they were going to do. It was going to drive her insane, trying to sort all of this out. It seemed to her, no matter how she looked at it, that Helen had put them all in a no-win scenario. No matter what, they were going to lose something.

"You are auburn again, Abby-bird."

She looked up to see Connor sitting on the couch beside her; she hadn't even heard him approach, nor had she felt him sit down. "If that means I'm scared out of my mind about you lot, then yeah, I'm pretty auburn," she replied, moving closer to tuck her head against his chest. His arm settled around her back, fingers idly playing with the wispy little hairs at the back of her neck. "Connor, we can't let Helen win. We have to find a way to get through this. We will find a way through this, right?" she asked softly, tilting her chin up to look at him.

He was staring intently at the floor, a small frown working between his brows, and she recognised his expression as one of deep thought. "There are many strings of possibility that can be followed from this point onwards," he said at last. "The optical outcome is to eliminate Overlord Protocol without causing complete shutdown and without allowing the spider of doors to finish her work of turning them all to bloody marionettes to dance as she pulls their threads."

She bit her lip. "And how many threads have the optimal outcome at the end of them?" she asked.

Connor didn't answer right away. "I have not found one yet. But I will. I promise." He kissed her forehead gently. "Cannot lose to the spider when I have only now gotten my little bird back."

Abby managed a tiny smile as she hugged him a little tighter, but a knot of worry had settled someplace inside her, and she had a feeling that it wasn't going to go away any time soon. In fact, she knew that it wasn't going to leave her until Helen had been dealt with once and for all.


	18. Disarm and Desire

Jenny sat at the table in the kitchenette, reading over the latest incident reports whilst she finished her lunch. Across the table from her, Danny was watching the match on the telly and Stephen was reclined in a nearby chair reading a novel. It'd been well over a week since the discovery of Overlord Protocol, and none of the Dozen had shown any signs of deterioration insofar. To Jenny, they all still seemed just as crazy and peculiar as they had ever been. Cutter and Connor were searching for any sort of solution, though they'd yet to turn up any results. Apart from a single anomaly the day before, it had been a slow week for the ARC team, and she was rather enjoying the reprieve it offered.

But of course, she should have known better than to think it would last very long.

As she finished the last page of the report, India Four Gamma came into the kitchenette. The Dozen had begun to shift slightly, no longer wearing the all-black uniform unless on alert and instead wearing normal, civilian clothes. India was a very pretty young woman, with smooth skin the colour of coffee with cream, glossy dark hair, and warm eyes that were such a dark shade of brown it was hard to differentiate between iris and pupil. Today she wore a flowery dress of a light, floaty material that gave her a sort of fairylike grace. She didn't wear any shoes, but that wasn't anything new; a silver chain gleamed from one slim ankle. She stepped through the kitchenette silently, eyes drifting around as if to take in everything. Then she walked over to the counter, seemingly looking for something.

Jenny glanced up as the dark-skinned woman drifted over to Danny; she saw the gleam of silver in India's hand a moment too late. Before she could open her mouth, India lifted her arm and slashed out at the copper with nimble speed, and Danny let out a startled curse as the steak knife in the girl's hand opened a long-though-shallow gash across his chest, ripping open his grey t-shirt. Reacting out of instinct and pain both, Danny lashed out with one hand, catching India in the mouth and sending her reeling backwards.

In an instant, Jenny was on her feet and walking around the table to look at the wound. Stephen leapt up from his seat, hastening over to pick up the knife that India had dropped, holding it well away from her. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Danny ground out through clenched teeth as he pressed a towel against his chest to slow the bleeding.

India sat up, her eyes wide and fixed. Her lip was cut and oozing blood down her chin. "He looks better in red," she said calmly, looking up at Stephen and Jenny as if searching for agreement. "Does he not?"

* * *

Lester sat back in his chair with a heavy sigh, reaching up with one hand to rub his forehead in an attempt to alleviate the headache that he felt slowly building there. He had grown somewhat used to his employees being injured by the strange and unusual, having experienced just about everything from raptors to Future Predators to sabre-toothed cats, but to have his minions—employees, whatever—injured by _each other,_ that was a little more...normal than he was used to. He didn't even want to begin contemplating what it meant that he was more used to his people being injured by prehistoric creatures than other human beings. But it was a problem, that was entirely certain.

One of the Dozen, India Four Gamma, as her subject title went, had apparently decided that Quinn needed a new scar and proceeded to carve him one with a steak knife, simply proclaiming that the man looked better in red when asked her purpose. Lester thought that his wife looked good in red, too, but he'd never think that blood was an appropriate substitute for her scarlet silk gown. None of the team had said it aloud, resolutely looking out for each other, loyal to a fault as ever, but he knew that this signified the beginning of the end. It might take several more weeks or perhaps only a few more days, but he knew that the Dozen were going to succumb to this Overlord Protocol, and sooner rather than later as anticipated, even though Cutter and Temple were still diligently searching for another solution.

 _Should've taken that job in Whitehall when I had the chance,_ he thought. "Lorraine," he called, and the dark-skinned woman stuck her head into his office.

"Yes, sir?"

"Send in Captain Becker," he ordered.

"Yes, sir."

A moment later, the young captain was standing in his office as ordered, hands clasped behind him, back straight. Lester didn't approve of many things, including most of the actions of his maverick civilian team, but he approved of Becker—the man was everything that the team wasn't: professional, calm, collected. "You asked for me, sir?"

"Yes, Captain, I did. If the Dozen's grip on reality is truly beginning to falter, then you understand that I have an obligation to take preventative measures to ensure that nobody in the facility is in harm's way," Lester said brusquely, and the captain gave a curt nod in reply even though no question had really been asked. "Good. That is why, effective immediately, I want their access to the armoury strictly limited. None of them are to be in that room unless you yourself are present. Those...EMD weapons they have, they are to be confiscated and kept secure. The assortment of blades they keep on their person are to be taken as well. We don't need any repeat incidents like this one."

Becker paused slightly, a small frown working between his brows. "Excuse me, sir, but the Dozen are an essential part of the response team. I'm not comfortable sending them out into the field unarmed, sir," he said.

Lester fixed the captain with a cool glare. "Whoever said they are going back into the field?"

"Sir?"

"You heard me, Becker. Until we know just what exactly is going on with the Dozen or until Cutter and Temple pull another miracle out of their hats, the Deadly Dozen will not take any further part in _any_ alerts or incursions, and that is final." He would never admit it aloud to any of his underlings, but those twelve people truly frightened him. It wasn't just the startling efficiency with which they could fight and eliminate any enemy that lay before them, it was the flat, dead look in their eyes when they did it. That look alone was what really scared him. It was like he was standing upon the edge of a cliff, looking down into an abyss with no end. There was no soul, no humanity, in their eyes whenever they were in the grip of whatever mental programming the ghastly Helen had instilled in their brains. Perhaps he was being a bit harsh in doing this, but he wouldn't allow anyone else under his command to be killed because those twelve had the misfortune of being Helen Cutter's lab rats.

Becker clenched his jaw tight a moment, biting back remarks that would surely end up with his pay being docked. "Yes, sir," he ground out.

"Good man. Hop to it, then," Lester dismissed with a flick of his fingers; the captain turned on heel and strode out of the office. Once he was gone, Lester exhaled a slow breath. _Should've taken that job in Whitehall._

* * *

"No."

November's voice was flat and serious as he took an apprehensive step back from Becker, all the rest of the Dozen edging away from the captain as well, as if he were somehow contagious. November Eight Tau was a big fellow, taller than Becker, with dark blue eyes, short brown hair, wide shoulders, and a deep chest, a contrast to the slender build of the other males of the Dozen, and even though his personality was kindhearted, it didn't mean that he wasn't physically intimidating when he wanted to be.

"Sorry, mate, but it's Lester's orders. I have to do it," Becker answered, and they could hear the true note of regret in his voice. He really didn't want to do this, and he honestly felt bad, seeing the heartbroken looks on some of the Dozen's faces. They treated their weapons like pets, as if they were sentient beings instead of inanimate objects, and the idea of being disarmed was a distressing one. In his head, the captain cursed the suited bureaucrat for everything he was worth, silently hating Lester for making him do this to people that he'd come to consider his friends. "Please, November. Either you give them up willingly, or we'll have to take them from you, and I don't want to have to do that," Becker said in his most placating tone, trying hard to keep himself from begging. Any one of them, even tiny Foxtrot, could probably whip his arse to Manchester and back without breaking a sweat, which is why he was hoping that they would give up their weapons without fuss.

November chewed his lower lip a moment, looking torn, but then took the EMD pistols from his belt and set them on the table, slowly, as though every movement to disarm himself was painful. Becker kept a watchful eye as the man removed the assortment of blades that he kept on his person. The Dozen used knives more than the EMDs, and therefore carried a wide variety of them. Becker had seen their entire inventory, though, so he knew exactly what they all carried: the main weapons of choice were two long double-edged knives, slightly curved, that were kept right in reach strapped to his thighs, a pair of small, slim knives that were tucked in his boots, a blade that was almost as long as him from shoulder to waist in a sheath strapped on his back, and a set of a dozen small throwing knives shaped like arrowheads, six on each side of his belt. The Dozen wore a uniform that was entirely identical, head to toe, but their weapons carried small variations that kept them from being identical as well. The blades all had designs etched into them, each unique to the owner, and the same pattern marked the barrels and grips of their EMDs. November's design was an intricate filigree pattern as complex as a snowflake, shining subtly from every one of the blades laid out on the table. "I am sorry," he murmured softly, eyes mournful as he lightly ran his fingers over the assortment of glistening steel. "I would not leave you behind if it were not important."

Becker packed each of the weapons into a lined case with care, knowing how important they were to his strange friends. "I'm sorry too, November," he said softly. He shut the case and locked it, setting it aside to be locked in the armoury when he was finished with his loathed task. "Who's next?"

His stomach turned slightly as Connor stepped up to the table. The younger man's face was thoroughly miserable, though there was a gleam of understanding in his eyes as he gave a small nod; Becker returned the gesture. Neither of them wanted to do this, and Connor wasn't going to hold it against Becker for following orders passed down to him from the boss. The student removed his weapons with reluctant efficiency, looking just as put-down to have his knives taken from him. The designs on Connor's knives were made up of a mysterious swirling pattern interspersed with letter-like runes, like something from a faerie tale, weapons meant to be in the hands of great heroes. "You will take care of them, won't you?" he asked softly as he held the two long knives in his hands, not quite setting them down.

Becker met his eye and nodded. "You have my word."

Connor carefully placed his knives upon the table. "I will hold you to it." Taking a deep breath, he walked away from the table and strode out of the room.

Hating himself for having to do this, Becker once more wished every terrible thing he could think of upon Lester, even though he understood the need for this. He packed up Connor's blades into an empty case and locked it. "Foxtrot, you next."

* * *

"That bastard. That greasy, two-faced, pen-pushing _bastard,"_ Cutter swore angrily, shoving out of his chair to stride across the kitchen. He grasped the edge of the counter so tight his knuckles turned white, glaring at the wall as if it'd done him personal injury.

Jenny normally wouldn't have approved of him talking like that, but in this case, she was quite inclined to agree with him. When she found out that Lester had put all the Dozen off the field team _and_ taken their weapons, she had cursed quite a bit as well. It hadn't even been that terrible of an incident; Danny hadn't needed any stitches, just some bandages. There was still no guarantee for next time, though. Next time might end up with someone's throat being cut instead of their chest. A part of her understood why Lester gave the order he did, but that didn't mean she had to agree with it. Taking them off the field team was one thing, but locking them out of the armoury _and_ locking up their weapons, with all the danger unfolding around them, seemed cruel, like Lester was purposefully trying to leave the Dozen as vulnerable as possible.

She slowly pushed to her feet, walking around the table to wrap both arms around Cutter's waist, lacing her fingers together in front of him. "I know," she murmured softly.

"I mean, I get not wanting them into the armoury where there's bloody _grenades,_ but taking their knives? What if Helen sends her canids after them? What are they gonna use to protect themselves? Their fingernails?" Cutter spat, a growl rumbling in his chest, the sound as deep and dangerous as the noise of distant war.

Jenny could feel the vibrations of his growling through his back, humming in her own chest. "They aren't defenceless, Nick. You've seen them fight," she tried to soothe him. The Dozen could fight unlike anything she'd ever seen.

He shook his head. "You don't understand. These canids, they're _dangerous._ They've got the impulse regulator chips in their heads, which means they don't fight like wild animals; they fight with precision, tactics, and they don't hesitate, not anymore. Helen's got them all under her control. They hunt in packs, huge packs. I know the Dozen are good, but Jenny, they're not _that_ good," he protested. "If the canids ever got one of the Dozen in a corner, they'd slaughter him without blinking twice at it." Even as he said it, he reached up to scratch at the new scars on the inside of his elbow where one of the wolf hybrids had ripped into him with its teeth. They were exactly what Helen intended—animal strength and savagery and cold indifference coupled with human intelligence and tactic and practicality. A very dangerous, very lethal combination.

Jenny stood up on her toes to kiss the back of his neck, his hair tickling her nose and cheeks as she did so. "It's only temporary, though. It'll all be put back to normal once this Overlord Protocol thing is taken care of," she murmured softly, and she felt him tense slightly in her arms.

"I'm not sure that I can do this, Jenny," he admitted. She was the only person he trusted enough to ever admit doubt or fear to.

"You can, Nick. I know that you can."

They stood in silence for a moment, but then she began to lightly run one hand across his back, from shoulder to waist and back again, feeling the strong, hard muscle beneath the simple black t-shirt. He relaxed into her touch, his love-growl sliding out of his chest. Jenny leant against him slightly, pressing herself a little closer as her hands glided across his sides, lingering where she knew the sensitive tiger stripes darkened his skin. He had become more receptive of her affection, though he still held himself back from ever taking it further, much to her infinite frustration, but the fact that he hadn't pushed her away yet was an encouraging sign. Her fingers slid a little lower, just slipping beneath the hem of his t-shirt to touch his bare skin. His grating purr of content went a note lower, but he didn't draw away; her own daring was stirring her excitement further, longing building in the pit of her stomach. Her breath came a little faster as she pushed her hands a little further beneath his shirt, sliding up his stomach.

He caught her by the wrists, gently-yet-firmly retracting her hands. "Jenny..." he said softly.

Barely resisting the urge to scream in frustration, she gritted her teeth and lowered her arms. That was all it took, that soft murmur of her name, to let her know that they would be going no further tonight. She took a deep breath to steady herself, taking a step back even though her desire ached to hold him closer. "I'm going to bed," she said, a little ashamed of how husky her own voice sounded. She was supposed to be a grown woman, damn it, yet this man had her feeling like some randy fifteen-year-old.

He turned around to face her; he didn't like having to push her away, but a part of him was still afraid of hurting her. The animal in him hungered after her, and when she touched him like that, it was almost impossible for him to keep the tiger at bay. "Jenny, you don't have to..."

"No, it's alright," she said, cutting him off, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm going to bed," she repeated.

He could still see the tension in her, though, hear her uneven breathing and quickened heartbeat. The scent of arousal, his and hers both, was thick in the air, going straight to his head like a drug. The animal in him gave a low rumbling purr of desire, and whatever resistance he had left dissolved away. "Oh, sod it all," he growled low in his throat, moving towards her.

Before she could ask what he was talking about, one large, warm hand wrapped around her arm and turned her around. Then his hands were on her waist, lifting her up as if she was no more than a doll full of sawdust to sit her up on the edge of the counter; his hands slid behind her knees, hooked her legs around his hips, sank one hand into her thick dark hair, and pressed his other hand to her back, pulling her in closer. Jenny let out a little squeaking gasp, the heat of his body suddenly so close to hers, so near that she could feel the soft tickle of his breath on her cheek. She lowered her gaze to his, and the look in his eyes nearly made her melt into her shoes. His blue eyes practically glowed with their intensity, wandering across her face, taking in her features and settling on her lips, full of animal hunger and lust and desire and passion and… _oh, Nick…_. "Now, listen to me, Jennifer Lewis," he said, his voice layered with the deep rumble of his love-growl, the sultry note making her toes curl. "I have wanted you for the past three years, and I warn you now—if we continue on like this…I might not be able to help what happens next."

Jenny felt her stomach quiver at the deep animal tones in his voice, the lust that darkened his gaze, the hunger in his words. Her skin prickled with sensitivity, every nerve ending suddenly hyperaware of his presence. She licked her lips, watching his eyes darken; her hands slid up his sides, gliding up to his chest, then to his shoulders. "Yes, Nick," she whispered softly.

He tightened his hand in her hair, lunging forward to crush his lips to hers, taking the kiss that he had been craving for three long, lonely years. She went numb with shock at the sudden assault of the kiss, but then she practically melted into him, arms winding around his neck and pulling him in closer. Her fingers latched onto his thick gold-and-black hair, weaving into the long, silky-soft strands. Cutter parted her lips with his own, tongue sliding against hers slow and unhurried. _Christ,_ the man knew how to bloody kiss. The taste of him, rich and wild and spicy-sweet, filled her mouth, making her shiver, arching into him with delight. He pulled his hands from her hair and instead shoved them up beneath her blouse, the abrupt contact of bare skin causing her to groan aloud; his skin was hot and callused, scraping against her sensitive skin and igniting heat in her nerve endings.

They broke apart only when oxygen became a necessity, and then he instead turned attention to her neck, trailing a warm, damp path of kisses down the side of her throat, across the slope of her shoulder. A shudder tore through her as he raked his teeth across her throat, just scratching her skin with the sharp tips of his canines. "Nick," she whispered, voice husky as she grasped at him. "Nick, bedroom. Now."

Another deep growl slipped from his throat as he lifted her off the counter, staggering down the hallway towards his room.


	19. Falling to Pieces

Connor felt terribly exposed without his knives. They had always been with him, always within reach, always there, and to suddenly have them taken away left him feeling vulnerable, an armadillo with its armour taken off. He kept reaching down to run his fingers across his belt and thigh were they were supposed to be strapped, the way a person probed a missing tooth with their tongue. It was too quiet now, too silent without the liquid, crystalline notes they sang just above auditory range counteracted by the lower humming pulse of the EMDs. It was terrible. He shoved both hands back through his hair, wincing as they caught on tangles. His hair had gone serpentine again. It was annoying and painful, and it reminded him off all the knots and tangles that his own mind was in.

Something was happening to him. There was no way for him to tell just how long it would take for Overlord Protocol to eat away all his foundation so he would collapse on himself, but he could feel it changing. His pieces were starting to come loose again. They were developing cracks and fissures, and no matter how he tried, they could not be repaired. But that was not all it was. He could force the pieces to hold together through force of will. That did not worry him, not yet. It was something else.

Ever since his awakening in the Complex, he had been able to feel his siblings, the others that were bound to him in silver cord. Even now, if he felt along the invisible link, he could draw on ghostly input sensation from the others. Whiskey and Foxtrot were sitting in the rec room; he was drawing a brush through each one of her curls, and it felt pleasant. Sierra, Bravo, and Lima were in the training room, going through exercises. He could feel the responding stretch in his own muscles. It was familiar and comforting, a knowledge that he was never alone. He could feel his Abby-bird, too, through the cord that was all their own, delicate-strong and knotted securely beneath his ribs. She could not feel him, though perhaps on some level she recognised his emotional responses. But this was new.

He was beginning to gain awareness beyond himself and the Manticore. His senses expanded beyond the parametres of his own individuality. It was wrong and it was maddening. It terrified and thrilled him all at once. He used to gain only the faintest echoes from the minds of certain creatures, but now he could see them clearly, sharp and clear in his mind. And he could pick up on the input from minds of other humans, something that had never happened before. Perhaps that was part of the spider's plans, to drive him even madder than he already was before destroying him fully. It seemed like something she would enjoy, watching a prey squirm in the web before injecting it full of poison.

"Conn?"

He twisted around to see Stephen Hart—hart and not heart, because he was a Stephen-deer, a hunted hart what goes a-hunting—standing in the doorway of the office, leaning against the frame. "We're heading out to the pub for a round. Wanna come with?" he asked.

He could not stand to imbibe alcohol anymore, the taste was foul and it messed with his receptors, but accompanying the fellows on his team to the pub would be better than sitting in the ARC bemoaning the loss of his metallic companions and the slow-steady crumbling of his foundation. "Acceptable," he replied, rising to his feet and picking up his jacket.

* * *

Stephen could tell that Quebec and Connor were both still upset about the confiscation of their weapons; the rest of the Dozen was too. Whilst he understood that it probably wasn't safe to leave mentally unstable people with almost twenty different knives on them, he couldn't say that he agreed with leaving them completely unarmed with a pack of canid hybrids and Helen still gunning for them. He was glad to take them out to the pub for a round, if only to distract them from their own misery for a short time.

He felt a presence at his elbow and looked down to see Quebec standing beside him, and when he took in what she wore, he couldn't help but let out a snort of laughter.

She made an indignant face. "What?" she demanded

"Nothing, nothing," he answered, though still smiling. "It's just…God, now I _know_ that you're Connor's sister."

Quebec had just as much a strange fashion sense as her brother did, because instead of her sleek all-black femme fatale getup, she was wearing black-and-white striped tights beneath a dark blue-green-purple plaid skirt, a silver-on-black pinstriped waistcoat unbuttoned over a t-shirt that had a picture of the T.A.R.D.I.S. on it, and a bright red long-sleeved shirt underneath it, along with a pair of Converse sneakers that had a galaxy pattern on them instead of a solid colour. She even wore fingerless gloves, though hers were made of black fabric laced with silvery threads that sparkled subtly whenever she moved her hands. Not exactly something that someone wore on a night out at the pub, but appealing nonetheless. He would be so brave as to describe the look as 'adorkable'. She planted both little fists on her hips, narrowing her eyes up at him. "Is that an insinuation that my attire is not appropriate?" she challenged.

Stephen couldn't help but laugh at the look on her face. Even though he knew how strong she really was, it was just so… _ridiculous_ , seeing a tiny girl-woman that barely cleared his shoulder when standing on her toes glaring up at him, looking like she was about to challenge him to a round of fisticuffs. "No, no," he said, forcing himself to keep a straight face. "You—you look very nice, Q. Honest."

She narrowed her dark eyes at him again. "You are viridian," she announced, then relaxed, seemingly appeased by his answer.

He wondered what that colour meant, if viridian was even a colour and not some fancy word for 'full of shite'. "What d'you want to drink?" he asked as she climbed up to sit on the barstool beside him. She was so short that her Converses cleared the floor about four inches.

"I do not imbibe alcohol. Tastes like rubber and asphalt and makes my receptors go fuzzy," she replied.

"Okay, then. You drink soda pop?"

"Acceptable," she agreed.

Stephen couldn't help but snicker quietly as he handed her a glass. "How have you been feeling?" he asked, looking down at her in concern. There were shadows beneath her dark eyes, a sign that she hadn't been sleeping much, and there was an air of…delicateness about her, like she was something made of spun glass and could break if the wind blew too hard. In his mind, she was a living paradox. She was so fragile, yet she was stronger in ways he could never be.

Quebec let out a soft sigh, slumping a little in her chair. "Nightmares grab with sticky hands and drag furrows through my mind. My sleeve is all unravelled," she murmured quietly. "I do not want to be a marionette again, and when I sleep, I become one in my dreams. I fear my dreams become reality."

He placed a hand on her shoulder, able to feel her collarbone beneath the clothes, and he leant towards her slightly, just close enough that he could smell the soft, musky scent of her. "You're gonna be okay, Q. Nothing's gonna happen to you lot. We won't let it. _I_ won't let it."

She smiled and placed her little hand over his. The softness of her skin was a pleasant contrast to the scratchy fabric of her gloves. "The stone tortoise lets her curl up beneath the shell and be safe from the spider," she murmured back.

"Damn right he does," Stephen agreed, not even minding that she called him a tortoise again—there didn't seem to be any way to make her stop, anyways, so he might as well accept it.

She smiled, and then her head cocked to the side, the motion not unlike a dog hearing a whistle. "Abby-bird and little brother are here," she announced, and not a moment after she'd said it, Connor and Abby made their way over to the bar with them.

"You'd make a killing as a psychic, you know that?" Stephen asked with a glance down at her, and she rolled her eyes.

* * *

Quebec sat close to Stephen as they talked, not really up to saying much because she knew that the thoughts currently occupying her head were of technology far too advanced for their comprehension. She just liked listening to the silvery-blue sound of his voice, mingling with Abby's brighter green-and-gold words, calm and pleasing colours. As she lightly ran one fingertip along the rim of her glass, she heard a sound too low for any human to hear, and her head automatically whipped around towards it. Even though she did not see him, she knew that little brother had done the same.

There, across the pub, stood one that was not like the rest, a king amidst the milk snakes. A hybrid, fully equipped with impulse regulator chip, was staring at them. His face was lean and angular, and his eyes were more golden than brown. _Canis latrans,_ she thought. Before she could move to alert Stephen of the hybrid's presence, he had left, dissolving away into darkness as if never existing at all.

The telly that had been showing the match suddenly cut out, the screen showing nothing but static, much to the irritation of several other patrons. But Quebec could hear them, the icy hissing of the spider's thread woven into the noise. It crawled across her skin and into her mouth and nose and eyes, forcing its way into her very being. The spider opened its fangs wide and swallowed her thoughts.

She felt a half-healed wound somewhere in her psyche split open, allowing the oily black to spill forward into her mind.

* * *

He didn't even notice it when the small form at his elbow drifted away into the crowd, but then a loud crash—sounded like a chair being thrown into a body before hitting the floor, to his well-honed ear—followed by a high-pitched scream made him sit upright in his chair. Stephen turned around and instantly noticed that Quebec was no longer beside him, and Connor had somehow drifted off as well. Another crash, another scream, and several voices shouting. His blood ran cold as he jumped to his feet, pushing past the other patrons of the bar.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Brother and sister were moving in that fast, feverish sort of way they only had when full in the grip of their behavioural conditioning. Except now they were delivering a ferocious beating to an entire pub. And _winning._ The Dozen altogether were a force of nature unto themselves, but even the Temple siblings alone were deadly. It went beyond simple cooperation. They moved like one person, each knowing exactly where the other was and moving to compensate for their weaknesses. Connor whirled around and kicked one man in the stomach, throwing him backwards, and without even faltering, he twisted around, using the added momentum to snap his foot up beneath another man's jaw, taking the sorry bastard right off his feet with the blow. Quebec was right at her brother's back, moving like…Stephen didn't even have words for what she moved like, but if he hadn't been so worried, he probably would've been drooling. It made a hot, fierce longing lurch in his chest and his pulse speed up. As he watched, she ducked beneath the fist of an attacking man and drove her small hand forward with vicious force, right into the man's kidney. She didn't have the muscle mass to land a direct punch, but damned if she didn't know every pressure point and nerve cluster to use to her advantage.

Stephen pushed his way through the rapidly-thinning crowd to get at her, and he wrapped both arms around her thin body."Quebec, it's me," he gasped, gritting his teeth at the pain. She somehow balanced on one foot, her other foot swinging back and around to kick him hard in the back, hard enough that his arms loosened just enough for her to twist free, flowing out of his grip like water.

She whirled around, one hand coming towards his face, and he barely had time to think _oh, shit_ before her hand froze not a centimetre away from his face. "Stephen?" she whispered, her face draining of colour until he thought she'd pass out where she stood.

"Yeah, it's me, Q," he said quietly.

Her face crumpled, tears flowing down her face as she collapsed; he caught her easily, lifting her up into his arms. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she sobbed into his shoulder, clutching at him hard enough to bruise.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Connor on his knees, hunched over with face buried in his hands, trembling with sobs. A pale-faced Abby stood beside him, hands on his shoulders. "Time to go," Stephen said.

As he hastened out of the pub, stepping over the unconscious bodies of a few patrons, he heard Quebec whispering softly, her eyes wide and fixed. "I've come undone. I've shattered. Overlord Protocol has won."

"It has _not_ won, and you are _not_ broken," Stephen said through gritted teeth.

Behind him, Abby was pulling Connor along, guiding him like a seeing-eye dog. She guided him into the passenger seat of her car, but before she could move to close the door, his fingers dug into her arm hard enough to bruise, pulling her in close. His eyes were wide and fixed, an eerie, feverish light in them. "It ends as it begins for those forged in fire and blood. The serpents eat their own tails so as to start as they finish. The city of light shines for all to see, but at its heart lies only darkness. Cerberus guards the gates against the Manticore, and the only way out is in," he said, his voice oddly flat. Before she could open her mouth to ask what he meant, his grip went slack, lashes fluttering closed as he passed out, slumping over in the seat.

Abby eased her wrist from his hand and moved around to get into the driver's seat. Stephen was sitting in the back with Quebec still in his lap, as the dark-haired woman was still clutching to him like a limpet. "We're going back to the ARC."

* * *

"Y'know, somehow, _'I told you so'_ just doesn't quite cover it," Jenny said with a sated, smug grin on her lips.

Cutter rolled his eyes as he kissed a soft path along her bare shoulders. "I get it. You were right," he answered. "You don't have to brag."

She stretched her entire body like a contented cat, and he watched the lines of her body move beneath the sheets. "No, I think I'll hold onto this just a little while longer. Bit more fun," she replied.

He didn't bother gracing that with an answer, just returned his attention to her shoulders, drawing aside her hair with one hand so he had unhindered access. Jenny let out a quiet sigh, turning towards him so he could reach better, lying on her stomach. He lightly ran his fingertips along the curve of her spine, feeling her shiver and arch into his touch, stroking along the curve of her back. He wasn't quite sure he'd ever get enough of simply being able to touch her, simply run his hands over her body and feel her respond to him so eagerly. Even his inner animal, normally so restless, was settled and content, perfectly at ease, giving a low, raspy growl of satisfaction. Cutter pressed one last kiss to the tender spot on her shoulder before moving up to bury his nose into her hair, inhaling the scent of her.

She rolled over in his arms so she lay on her back, looking up at him. Her fingers combed through his hair, brushing it back out of his face. He unashamedly leant into her touch, turning his head to kiss her palm and the tender inside of her wrist. "Jenny," he said softly.

"Hm?"

"I…I love you," he murmured, his voice so quiet she almost didn't hear it.

All at once, she felt warm down to her toes, her entire body humming with pleasure and delight. She knew him well enough to know that he wasn't one to talk about his feelings, that the harsh year spent in the Complex had forced him to become hard in ways she doubted she could ever be, and he wouldn't ever say those words if he didn't damn well mean them. Jenny had to swallow hard past the lump in her throat. "I love you, too," she replied quietly. He smiled slightly and relaxed into her, sliding down the bed slightly so he could lay his head on her shoulder, arms winding around her waist to pull her in closer to him; she stroked his hair lovingly, simply bathing in the warmth of being with him, knowing that they were in it together now, no matter what might happen.

* * *

She was drawn out of sleep by the sound of her mobile ringing. Jenny reluctantly opened her eyes and let out a low groan of irritation. "Damn it all to hell."

"Ignore it," prompted Cutter, now lying at her back with both arms around her waist.

As she reached out and picked up the mobile, a small frown came to her face. "It's Stephen's number calling," she replied. "That's…Stephen doesn't call me unless something's really wrong." He sat up beside her as she opened the mobile, holding it to her ear. "What's going on?"

 _"We've got a problem,"_ came Stephen's immediate reply. _I knew it,_ Jenny thought, but then she noticed that Stephen actually sounded nervous. That was something new. For as long as she'd known him, the tracker had always kept a firm handle on his emotions, and to hear him sound uneasy about anything was enough to set her on edge. _"Something set Connor and Quebec off at the pub. That protocol thing, whatever the hell it is, it's getting worse. We're back at the ARC now, and all the Dozen are like them. They're losing it, Jenny, and I really don't think they're gonna be able to keep it together any longer."_

Beside her, Cutter went tense as his keen hearing picked up on the conversation. "We'll be there in twenty," she replied before closing the mobile. She looked over her shoulder at him, saw the tense expression on his face. A silent understanding passed between them in the brief gaze, and then they were both getting out of the bed and going for their clothes. Any moment of relaxation they had was over, and now they had to dive right back into the madness of the life they led.

Abby crouched on her heels beside the wall panel in the central hub of the ARC; it was Connor's hiding place, the little bolt hole where he often curled up during one of his crazier spells. It wasn't very big, maybe a metre and a half square, but he was remarkably flexible and could fold himself up inside there for hours at a time. "Please, please come out, love?" she murmured, but all she got in reply was a low, keening whimper. She could've gone in after him, but the space wasn't big enough for the both of them, and she didn't want to take his hiding place away from him. Sitting back on her heels, she looked up at Becker, giving him a helpless shrug and a look that said _'what else can I do?'_

To anyone else, the captain's face would've looked entirely impassive, but Abby could see the faint lines of strain around his eyes. As odd as it seemed, Becker really did consider the Dozen to be his friends and comrades, brothers-in-arms in a way, and even if he didn't show it very well, he cared about them. "None of them will come out," he admitted. "They won't talk to anyone, just sit there in their bolt-holes, and they'll scream louder than anything when we try to get them out."

Apparently, Quebec and Connor hadn't been the only ones to have a mental lapse. Back in the ARC, the other ten members of the Dozen had gone just as crazy, attacking several members of the staff before collapsing. Nobody had been killed this time, but there were several soldiers that would be in recovery for a good long while. And now they were curled up in their separate little bolt-holes, all of them just as miserable as Connor was. When one of the men had lost patience and tried to forcibly drag Sierra out of her hiding place, an empty cupboard, she'd screamed as if they had burned her alive.

"Did he say anything to you? Did any of them say anything?" asked Cutter, standing near the ADD. He kept pushing one hand back through his hair, raking the black-and-gold strands out of his face, a slightly-frightened look on his face.

Becker shook his head. "No, just crazy stuff about Overlord Protocol and broken pieces. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, and I'm _used_ to the way they talk," he answered.

"Same here," Stephen replied as he walked back into the hub; he'd been on the second floor for the past twenty minutes, trying and failing to coax Quebec out of hiding. There was a worried frown etched into his features, and he couldn't seem to be still, humming with nervous energy.

Abby lightly rested her hand on the panel, almost able to feel Connor's presence lurking just behind it. "Conn said something to me before he passed out," she said, and all eyes turned towards her. "I mean, it didn't make a lick of sense, but…."

"But it could still help. What did he say?" Cutter asked.

"Uhm, he said, 'it ends as it begins for those forged in fire and blood. The serpents eat their own tails so as to start as they finish. The city of light shines for all to see, but at its heart lies only darkness. Cerberus guards the gates against the Manticore, and the only way out is in,'" she recited.

"The hell does that mean?" Jenny asked.

Cutter gestured for her to be silent. "Hang about, now. Let me think," he muttered, sinking down into an empty chair. "It ends where it begins in the city of light. The only way _out_ is _in._ Into the city of light…." He muttered on to himself, shaking his head slowly, but then his head snapped up, face going slack in realisation. "City of light," he repeated. Then, moving with the animal speed only a hybrid could pull off, he leapt from the chair and crossed the room to kneel in front of the panel, making Abby edge backwards some. He pressed one hand to the smooth metal. "Connor, lad, the city of light, is that where it began? Is it?" he asked urgently.

"It ends as it began, in the dark heart of the place that shines with light," came the soft, disembodied reply, the young man's voice echoing eerily in the empty space behind the panel; the professor rocked back on his heels, hissing through his teeth.

"Nick, what's going on?" asked Jenny.

The pale-haired man stood up slowly. There was a look on his face, a look of terrible knowledge, as if he had just solved a difficult problem and now wished he'd never done so in the first place. "It ends where it began. The only way we can stop Overlord Protocol without rolling for Helen is to go back to where it all started in the first place. The canid hybrids are guarding it so the Dozen can't get in on their own. The only way to get out of this mess is to get further into it. We'll have to go where it all started, into the dark heart of a shining city," he said softly, his voice taking on a vacant, flat tone.

"Where's that, then?" Stephen demanded.

Cutter glanced over at them. "We have to go back to the Complex."


	20. Ctrl+Alt+Del

"The Complex? Nick, you're not serious, right? Please tell me that we're not actually considering going back to the place responsible for this whole bloody mess," Jenny implored, reaching out to grasp his wrist out of fear. He could smell her fear, her anxiety, sharp and spicy around her, like some cologne only he could detect. She was afraid—for him, for the Dozen, for everyone. Afraid that this was going to be too much for them. Even as she spoke, he remembered that place, memories he'd tried to bury rising to the forefront of his mind, memories of

_(god please stop it hurts and blood there's blood everywhere god let me die)_

being kept in cages barely large enough, feeling a little more of his _self,_ his humanity slipping away with every treatment, always hungry and cold and full of animal rage. Turning his head slightly to look at her, he grasped her soft hand in his own. "We have to," he answered.

"Why? How do you know the Complex is the answer?" Stephen demanded, looking just as uneasy as Jenny.

Cutter forcibly pushed aside his own memories and refocused himself on the present. "Connor said that it ends where it begins, in the dark heart of the city of light," he answered, but he knew that they wouldn't understand. He went on. "The Complex itself is the dark heart. The city of light...the future where it came from. That's what London is called in the future: the city of light. _'The city of light shines bright for all those in the darkness to see,'"_ he recited. "The scientists working there, they thought that what they were doing was right, that they were finding ways to make people _better_." He spat the word with distaste. He could remember them clearly, the slightly-fanatic looks in their faces, the obsessive gleam in their eyes. They had believed, more than anything, that they were doing right. It made him sick then, and it still made him sick now.

"I thought you said that it was in the Triassic," Abby said.

"No, that was just one small compound, one small outpost. The Complex itself is in the future London. That's where we'll have to go," Cutter replied.

Stephen cursed under his breath, running both hands back through his hair. "How? How exactly do we just pop off to the future, and how do we get the Dozen there? I doubt they're gonna be moving anywhere anytime soon," he demanded.

"I dunno. But we're going to have to find a way. That's the only chance we have of stopping this mess." Cutter paused for a moment, then felt his stomach sink. "The anomaly, the one at the racetrack. Has it closed yet?" he asked softly.

Jenny shook her head. "No. It's still open," she answered, and then her face went slack in realisation. "Nick, you can't be serious..."

"I am. We are going to go through that anomaly into the future, and we are going to find the Complex."

* * *

Things were quiet in the ARC, seeing as how it was so late. The others had gone home hours ago, but the Dozen refused to leave at all. They didn't trust themselves any longer, knowing that they were deteriorating so quickly, so they had chosen to stay in the Centre where they could be contained if neccessary. The other eleven were all asleep in their separate cots, except for Connor. He lay awake still, and Abby sat beside him in a chair she'd drawn up beside his cot.

"I am sorry, Abby, that our thread will be severed so soon," he whispered quietly, in that soft, gentle voice that had no right to say such horrible things.

Abby crossed the room and knelt beside his cot, putting her just about eye-level with him. "What do you mean, Conn? What thread?" she asked. She knew that he wasn't talking about the silver cord that tied him to the Dozen, because he said that couldn't be severed, which meant he was talking about something else entirely.

"Ours. Here." He touched his chest, right on his heart. "Woven strong and delicate. It is knotted beneath my left ribs, and the other end is knotted in the corresponding quadrant of your own frame, and if it was to be snapped, I've a rather disturbing notion that I would then begin to bleed internally."

Her eyes burned with the unfamiliar pressure of tears. "Conn…"

"Do you know how I fixed myself when fractured? How I put my broken pieces back together amidst all the pain and confusion?" he asked softly, and she shook her head mutely, not sure she could even talk. "I used a new core, a piece all mine own as the centre. I used the one piece that is only mine. Does not belong to the Complex or to the spider of doors or to the Manticore." He reached out to grasp her hand; at the contact of skin-to-skin, she felt an electric thrill ride up her arm, the fine hairs on her arm standing up from it. "I used the piece of me that is for my little bird."

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked tearfully, vision blurring as dampness gathered on her lashes.

"So you know why it hurts when I fall apart."

She clutched his arm tight, digging her nails in to emphasise her words. "You are _not_ going to die," she said firmly. He _couldn't_ die, not now. Not like this.

Connor let out a long, soft sigh, the miserable sound of one who'd long struggled against death yet now accepted his own fate, the sound of one who realised the full meaning of everlasting separation from one's true and only love. "Give me your hand, Abby-bird. I will show you," he said, uncurling one long-fingered hand and extending it to her.

She gently grasped her hand in his own. As his fingers curled around her wrist, she felt a lurch deep in her chest, a sharp, painful twist within her, just in her heart, and it made her gasp aloud, digging her nails into his hand out of reflex. "Connor…" she gasped, but didn't make it past his name. There were no words to describe it, but it felt as if something in her was being pulled open, like something was ripping straight past every bit of armour she had, tearing through every wall, right into the very heart of her, dragging her out of herself. She was suddenly under assault by a thousand sounds and colours and sights and tastes and smells, a sensory overload that should've made her numb. But it didn't. She wasn't. She was terribly, horribly exposed. It was like her skin had been peeled away from her body, baring every nerve she possessed to the excruciating onslaught. And the screaming. It was silent yet she could hear nothing else, ripping into her like blades, filling her mouth with the taste of blood, pulling her apart. Everything was coming apart, crumbling around her, but in the centre of the whirling maelstrom of chaos was a glowing, shimmering light, a beacon of love and warmth, but everything else was collapsing in on itself. It was falling apart, a silent unseen force slowly, agonisingly, tearing her asunder.

Suddenly she was thrust back into herself so violently that she fell out of her chair to the floor, sobbing. Abby pulled her hand from his, curled in on herself, and wept, tears coursing down her cheeks. The taste of blood and wax oranges filled her mouth, so thick it almost gagged her; her body tingled and burned and twitched from the aftershock.

Connor reached out to her, extending his arm once more, and she clung to him, burying her face in his sleeve, sobbing because she understood, just a little, what it meant to lose your own mind, to _feel_ yourself coming apart and being helpless to stop it. "You see now, little bird? I am falling apart. Overlord eats me away, and the silent screaming grows ever louder. I hear them, I hear them all, and they say nothing. They just lay down and scream," he murmured gently.

She sniffled and whimpered, unable to speak, making little hiccoughing sounds as she crawled up beside him in the narrow cot. He held her tight against him, letting her weep softly in his arms. Now that he had forcibly ripped down her walls and dragged her out of herself, she realised that she could _feel_ him, a soft presence just there at the periphery of her mind. "Oh, Connor. We'll find a way to fix this. We will."

* * *

Cutter couldn't sleep for the life of him that night. He knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep in the first place, but it helped Jenny to rest if he pretended. He lay in the bed beside her, listening the soft sound of her deep, even breathing, lightly trailing his fingertips across the soft curves of her body, feeling the lines of her form through the silken material of the sheets, taking care to etch every curve and hollow into his memory. Knowing how insane and dangerous this plan of his was, there was a good chance that he would never have another chance to do so. The thought was depressing yet still coldly true. Leaning forward slightly, he buried his nose against her hair and breathed in deeply, taking in the rich scent of her and holding it in his lungs as if he could keep it there. As he exhaled slowly, he pressed his lips to her bare shoulder, savouring the soft feel of her skin beneath his lips for a moment before carefully sliding out of the bed, taking care not to accidentally wake her.

Fully dressed and vitally awake, he drove back to the ARC, but this time, he wasn't there to see the Dozen or Lester or anyone else. He was there to see the hybrids.

With the Dozen as scattered and vulnerable as they were, Cutter knew that they were going to need a lot more support than the crazy little buggers could provide, and even though a part of him tore at having to drag the hybrids back into this, he knew that he would need them to have a chance of surviving this mess. Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door and stepped into the bunker that they had taken up shop in. The familiar, musky scent of them washed over him, the kind of scent that would be found in a zoo or somewhere else animals were kept.

"What're you doing here, Cutter?" asked Schulyer in her soft-spoken voice as she came towards him. Clean of blood and dirt, wearing fresh clothes, she was so _young_ that it made his chest ache, a girl barely old enough to be out of secondary. "I thought you had gone home with Miss Lewis."

"Yes, the little human bitch you've got on the side," Merinus sneered out, prowling back and forth. Even though they were in a better state than they had been since the escape from the Complex, she still looked like someone was shoving bamboo splinters beneath her fingernails. "How is _Miss Lewis?_ Y'know, Gavin and I still want to play with her—"

A short, abrupt snarl ripped out of his throat, silencing her mid-sentence, and the hybrids standing nearest to him winced slightly at the harsh sound. Once Merinus had skulked back a few steps, cowed, he looked back to the others. "I've got something to discuss with you lot," he said quietly. "The Dozen...are losing it. Helen's set up something called Overlord Protocol, and it's driving them mad. Pretty soon, it'll kill them, right after it turns them into a pack of murderous lunatics. Now, the only way we can hope to fix it...is to go back to the Complex," he said, and just as he'd expected, there was a ripple of murmurs and hisses and low growls and shuffling bodies. "I don't mean the one in the Triassic. I mean the actual _Complex,_ the one that's in the city of light, in the future. There's an anomaly we're going through tomorrow, the Dozen and the rest of the team and me, to find it."

"And you want us to come with," murmured Schulyer quietly.

"The Dozen are fighters, but the way they've been...I don't know if they can take it. And Helen will probably have the canids set up around the entire place, try to keep us out. The soldiers are human, they won't have a chance. And..." Cutter paused slightly. "Odds are, with that many canid hybrids around, there's going to be something in the Complex that could help us," he added, and there was another ripple of sound, this one more interested and questioning.

Zane, a jaguar hybrid, frowned. "Y'mean those impulse chips? The things she uses to control their brains?" he asked doubtfully.

"Yes, but I'm not talking about controlling anyone. I'm talking about fixing it so that way there's no more animal instinct. No more...wanting to hunt and stalk and kill people," Cutter answered. He took a deep breath. "I won't promise that it can be done, and the odds...aren't exactly working for us at this point. But I won't make you go. It's your choice, and nobody would think less of you for staying here."

There was a few seconds of silence, but then he felt a soft touch on his arm and looked down to see Schulyer beside him. "And on the off chance that this does work, and the impulse chips do repress our animal sides...we could go home, couldn't we?" she asked; he gave a small nod. She beamed a little wider. Cutter had no doubt that in a few years, once she'd grown up more, she would have boys drooling on their own shoes. "Well, hell, it can't get any worse, can it?" she asked. "I'm in. What's the plan, then, boss?"

Glancing upwards, he saw that the other hybrids were looking just as eager as Schulyer did, not a single voice of protest to be heard. As he began relaying the information to them, nobody noticed it when Merinus slid out a side door and made her way to the ARC.

* * *

He looked up as the door whispered open without a sound. It was the red-maned lioness, with her acid tongue dripping blades and venom. Madness hung about her like an aura, darkness crawling and writhing across her skin, invisible to all but him. Connor did not even have to reach out to her in order to feel the roiling waves of red-black-blood-pain-hunt-kill that washed about within the hollow shell where her soul should have been. The harsh taste of wax oranges and copper filled his mouth, sandpaper raking across his tender nerves. He was glad that he had left Abby to sleep in the cots and come to his empty office, so that way she would not have to feel the turmoil of the lioness. He did not rise from his chair as she stalked forwards.

"I hear you've gone nuclear," she hissed out. "That you and those other eleven freaks are a bunch of raving, foaming-at-the-mouth psychopaths, and pretty soon you're gonna crack and kill everyone off before kicking it."

Connor knew that she was trying to invoke some sort of response from him, but she was not telling him anything he did not already know. "Overlord Protocol has been enacted," he answered cordially, keeping his seat even as she came closer, leaning her tall form over him in an attempt to intimidate him; he had faced creatures bigger, crueller, and stronger than her and was not afraid.

"Do you know what I'm going to do once you freaks are dead?" asked Merinus softly, glaring down at Connor with madness flickering in her green eyes. "Your little whore, Maitland, I'm going to let Gavin have fun with her for a few days. Then _I'm_ going to play with her. I think I'll skin her alive. I've always wanted to try it on someone. I'd start from her feet and work my way up. And when I'm tired of hurting her, I'll kill her. Hell, I think I might eat her whilst I'm at it." Then, like a small child, she stuck out her tongue.

It was a red flag.

When Connor's boot came up under her jaw, he felt it shatter like a crystal goblet thrown against a stone floor. Her teeth severed her own tongue before they shattered too, a fine spray of blood leaving her mouth. The blow took her right off her feet, throwing her to her back on the floor a good distance away. Merinus coughed and spluttered, her eyes wide, attempting to scream past the blood that filled her mouth. Thick, wet gurgling noises emerged from her throat. "Turn over, lioness, or she will choke on her own blood. Turn over!" Connor ordered; she flopped over onto her stomach, blood pouring out of her mouth to form a rapidly-growing pool of red beneath her. The ends of her hair dragged through the blood. "I warned you what would happen if you did not take care with that tongue. Promise made, promise kept."

Strings of blood hanging from her mouth, Merinus managed to let out a choked, gurgling scream; it sounded like someone attempting to force air through a clogged pipe.

Connor pushed to his feet, stepping around her and making his way back down the stairs. His Abby-bird would wake soon and worry if he was not there beside her.

* * *

He was awake still when she walked into the office, sitting at a table with his guns laid out in front of him. He was preparing to enter the treacherous spider's web on the morrow, just as they all were. Vera was laid out clean and bright, but so were several of his other, smaller guns. Seeing them, Quebec felt an ache of longing for her own metallic companions.

Stephen raised his head even though she had made no noise to gain his attention; he simply _knew_ she was there. "Hey." It was only one word, but his voice came softer for her than for anyone else, a lovely, soothing whisper of silver and cerulean across her synapses.

"We enter the spider's web," she replied.

He gave a short nod. "Yeah. Think we're gonna make it?"

"Not sure. We have done all there is to be done to guide along the thread with an optimal outcome, but chance is still chance and may change upon a whim." Her gaze moved to him once more, briefly absorbed in seeing how the lighting from the lamp played across his short, messy brown hair, highlighting it with copper and honey. "There are things...things I would like to say, before we are to be surrounded by adhesive threads and snarling dogs." Taking a deep breath, she spoke. "It is a very strange thing, unaccountable and uncontrollable. I did not anticipate it. Sometimes, I still do not. I cannot quantify it or explain it or argue it into rationality. It simply _is_ , a thing in and of itself, and all my madness cannot drive it from me. It has changed me, formed a core within me that does not belong to anyone but myself. I would not trade it for anything, not even for my own sanity. I love you, Stephen James Hart, as I never loved nor anticipate loving again."

She saw him go all ruffled inside with nerves, but he was not afraid, not apprehensive. Beneath the nerves, though, he also turned just as curly and burgundy as she was, laced through with shimmering prismatic hues. He set the gun down and rose to his feet, standing much taller than she was. She was used to being short, though. He stepped closer to her. "Look, I'm not...I'm not good with words, okay? I never have been," he admitted, and she knew that he wasn't. He showed his emotions with action, not spoken nuance. The touch of hand meant more to him than words. But he would try for her, and it made her feel curly-purple inside. "But I...it's like you said. I didn't expect it to happen, and I still don't understand it much myself, either. You and I...we understand each other. We know what's good and what's bad, and if it hasn't scared us off yet, then it probably never will. I won't be getting overly emotional about it, though. I'm not like that. I'm not the moonlight-and-roses type. Maybe it's not the normal way people feel love, but we aren't exactly outstanding examples of normality. I won't say it very much, either. But I _do_ love you, Quebec, a lot more than I ever thought I would. And that better bloody well last you, 'cause I won't say it again," he added, but she could feel all the warm tones of crimson and silver and gold that ran beneath the words and knew that he meant it.

"I know you will not be inclined to displays of emotion. If you were, you would not be Stephen Hart, and I would not love someone that is not him," she replied, coming a little closer to him.

Quebec reached up and gently laid her small little hand on his chest, right over his heart, and Stephen simply couldn't ignore the way his pulse jumped at even that slight contact. He looked down at her, her pale, delicate features framed in soft black hair, the slender grace of her body, fluid even in stillness. "Q," he mumbled out, ashamed of how husky his own voice came out, and her gaze lifted to his face; this close, he could see the soft, mysterious glints of gold in her liquid black eyes, framed in long black lashes. Unable to string together any more coherent words, he reached up and covered her small hand with his own, fingers curling around hers.

She stood up on her toes, her free hand came around to the back of his neck, and then her soft lips were pressed to his own. Stephen groaned helplessly into the gentle kiss, the likes of which he'd never received before. Her mouth was soft and sweet and so very perfect, lips moving tentatively, almost shyly on his. He wanted to push her against the wall and simply devour her, but he knew that a whole lot more tact was required. And besides, he didn't really want to rush, either. His free hand went to her slim waist, covering her hip entirely and drawing her in a little closer. It started off gentle and tentative, but soon enough, they were both pushing a little further, lips parting and tongues meeting. Her fingers danced across his shoulders, across his arms, and the light touch made him shiver.

Somehow, he still ended up holding her against the wall. Quebec had used the leverage the wall provided to slide up and wrap both her legs around his waist, one hand buried in his short-cropped hair, the other sliding up beneath his shirt. Stephen had his own hand beneath her jacket and shirt, resting on her bare stomach to feel her warm and quivering against him. Taking a deep breath, he drew away, ignoring the whimpering protest she voiced, and loosened his grip, allowing her to slide back down to the floor. "Can't believe I'm saying this," he rasped out, "but you need to get out of my room right now."

He didn't have to explain why he didn't want to push anything—as stressful as everything was, he was afraid that she was only doing this out of anxiety and fear that she would not have another chance and would then regret it later. He was afraid that she was too crazy to know her own mind, which she was. No matter what she said or did, he would refuse. "Very well," she said, her own voice coming out throaty. "But you are absolutely _forbidden_ to die until we have finished what we have begun here."

A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Yes, ma'am. Now, go on. Get."

As she walked towards the door, she smiled at assisting push forwards by a strong hand on her backside. There was nobody else in the hall to observe her leaving Stephen's room, which was good, because she knew she had to be decidedly mussed. The only ones nearby to notice were Sarah and Danny, but they were busy with affections of their own and had no attention to spare.


	21. Into the Spider's Web

Stephen came up next to Quebec, reaching out to touch her arm, and she turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were exhausted and haunted, full of ghosts, but a tiny smile still came to her lips. "You're gonna be okay," he said quietly.

"Perhaps. You are armed? Will be dangerous," she said softly.

"Yeah, of course." He had all his best guns with him, including Vera, slung over his shoulder, and his favourite hunting knife just in case. "I kinda wanted to bring a grenade or two, but Becker said no."

She smiled back. "Captain likes to assert his authority before the job begins. He shows his crest and waves his tail to show that he is dominant."

Standing a metre or so away but still within earshot, the captain protested, "I do not wave my tail." Becker sounded indignant. "Never in my life have I waved my tail."

"You did at Sandhurst," she replied, and felt embarrassment flood the captain in whorls of pink and orange. "Did not know the captain had a tattoo there," she added for good measure. The chagrin darkened into deeper shades of rose and sienna.

"What happened at Sandhurst?" asked Stephen, restraining a smile.

"Nothing," Becker replied brusquely, though his ears were turning pink. He cleared his throat awkwardly, ignoring the snickers.

He felt a tap on his arm and looked back at Quebec. She opened up her jacket, reached in one of the inside pockets, took out three small hand grenades, and passed them to Stephen; fighting a smile, he took them from her. "You _will_ be alright, Q. Promise."

A few feet away, Cutter stared at the locked anomaly, its soft ivory-gold light casting fractured, splintered reflections on the walls and floors around it. The racetrack had been closed down for the time being, with Jenny having thrown some long-winded very-official-sounding government paperwork their way, so they had unlimited access to it, and it would stay that way until the anomaly closed. It hadn't shown any signs of deteriorating; it was starting to look like it'd be a permanent fixture. It was had trying to imagine that the answer to everything they needed could lay just on the other side. It looked so…calm. Peaceful, even.

Behind him, the hybrids were getting kitted up for the journey and the soldiers were skulking over the fact they weren't going. The felids forewent the heavy body armour, knowing it'd only constrict their movement, and carried only one or two small pistols and perhaps a knife. All twenty-two felid hybrids had chosen to come with, with the exception of Merinus, who was still hospitalized, getting her lower jaw put back together and a new set of teeth put in after Connor shattered her own. He didn't know if they were doing this for themselves or the Dozen or just to take down Helen, but he was damn grateful that they were coming. He didn't know how many canid hybrids that Helen had made, but he knew that either way, they were going to be a problem. A very, very big problem.

He felt a soft touch on his arm and looked around to see Jenny standing beside him, a soft expression on her face. Her hand slid down to grasp his own, fingers interlaced. "We're really doing this, aren't we?" she asked quietly, looking at the anomaly.

"Yeah." He glanced down at her. "Scared?"

"Not really," she replied, then leaned her head against his shoulder; he rested his chin atop her hair. "I love you, Nick Cutter. No matter how this turns out."

"I love you, too." Cutter pressed a gentle kiss to her temple, then turned to look at the others behind him. Everyone was kitted up. Becker stood beside Danny and Sarah; the captain was holding his favourite shotgun in hand. Abby had one arm around Connor, who held to her side as if she as the only thing tying him to the surface of the earth…or perhaps the only thing keeping him sane. The rest of the Dozen were there, faces vacant, eyes unseeing, simply standing there. Stephen stood with the Dozen, speaking quietly to them. They were ready as they were ever going to be. Turning, he looked at the technician that waited by the anomaly locking device. "Once we leave, you lock the anomaly. After that, you wait two hours before you open it again. Fifteen minutes, and then you lock it for another two hours. Got it?" he ordered, and the tech nodded obediently, more than slightly frightened of the Scotsman. "Right, then. Open it."

The anomaly sprang open, and they stepped through into the future.

* * *

The abrupt glare of sunlight briefly dazzled them all, blinking rapidly in the bright light. Everything around them looked like it was about a hair away from falling into a pile of rubble on the floor. Grass had sprouted out from cracks in the pavement, growing through the sidewalks and the bottoms of rust-gnawed, decrepit cars. He couldn't see a single window still intact, and all the buildings showed signs of many long years of being exposed to the elements. He recognised that it was still London, but it was definitely future London.

"Where's the Complex?" asked Stephen quietly, standing at his side.

Looking around at the city, searching for a street sign, any kind of landmark, Cutter recognised where they stood. He didn't know what the Complex itself looked like, but he knew from reading some of the files stolen from the Triassic where it was; they were only a few blocks away from it. "This way. C'mon." Turning over his shoulder, he addressed the hybrids. "Keep an eye out." He didn't know if there were Predators or canids, but they had to be on guard.

The others following after him, he started down the cracked, grass-spotted sidewalks, skirting around the ancient rusted cars. The shop windows were nearly all shattered out, the doors smashed off their hinges; the cars were abandoned in the middle of the street, as if the owners had just decided to park there and leave them. He wondered how many years it'd been since a human being last walked these streets. As they went, a sudden, short cry split the air, and he whirled.

Connor had staggered, falling to his knees, clutching at his head with both hands. His face was a mask of pain, gasping raggedly. "I hear them. All of them. I can hear them all, and they're saying _nothing!_ They're just…they say nothing, only scream silence," he gasped out, eyes tight closed; behind him, the rest of the Dozen were in similar states, whimpering, hands over their ears.

Abby leant down to eye-level, holding his face between her hands. "Connor, please. You have to get up. We're going to make the screaming stop, baby, we'll make it stop, but you've got to get up. C'mon. Please, get up," she whispered urgently, clutching his arms.

"Get him up," urged Danny quietly, looking around at the surrounding buildings, keeping an eye out for Predators. "We can't stay out in the open like this."

"The Complex isn't far, Connor. We'll make the voices stop," Cutter urged.

The young man staggered to his feet, clinging to Abby desperately, and they started moving again, making their way through the ruins of the city.

As they went 'round the next corner, Cutter felt his breath catch slightly in his throat. In front of them was a huge building that took up half a city block; its concrete walls had stood the test of time, only slightly weathered. The windows, made of half-inch thick bulletproof glass reinforced with embedded chicken wire, had only cracked in a few places, none of them properly shattered. The battered, worn sign in front of the building said in large, bold letters _Complex of Nucleic Exchange Research Development._ "There it is," he said hoarsely.

The familiar, dreaded clicking noise split through the air, and his head snapped back. A Future Predator was crouched on the rooftop above them, clicking and burbling as its sightless face peered down at them, slaver oozing from its mouth. "Run!" Cutter shouted, gripping Jenny's wrist and taking off towards the Complex. The Predator shrieked and lunged towards them; one of the hybrids, he didn't see which, drew a knife and flung it towards the creature, embedding in one sightless eye socket up to the hilt. The creature staggered and shrieked, overshooting and slamming hard into a rusted car, trying to claw the knife out of its eye.

As more Predators began coming out of the buildings, they sprinted towards the Complex, for the safety of its heavy walls and reinforced windows. Cutter shoved open the heavy door, the rusted hinges squealing in protest. "Inside, _now!"_ he shouted. Jenny sprinted in, closely followed by the rest of the Dozen. Sarah and Abby were close behind. The hybrids were in next, still firing at the Predators, then Becker and Stephen. Two other hybrids came forward, helping Cutter shove the heavy doors closed once more; they felt the impact as a Predator slammed against to the doors, heard it scrabbling at the steel. Schulyer shoved the bolt home, locking the door closed, and they hastily backed away from it. The doors rattled for a moment longer before the terrible clicking and burbling sound of the Predators faded away. "Everyone alright?" Cutter asked quietly and got a murmured round of agreement. "Good. Well…at least we're inside."

"Connor," Abby gasped out softly, her voice laden with alarm, and he turned around. The young man had slumped to the ground, trembling and twitching, eyes rolling behind his closed lids. He whimpered, curling up on his side in the foetal position, head cradled in his hands. The rest of the Dozen had sunk to their knees as well, making similar noises of agony. "Connor, love," she murmured, wrapping her arms around him as he slumped into her. Fearful, she looked up at Cutter.

"Fuck," he swore under his breath. "They're falling apart."

Zane stepped forward, leant down, and picked up Foxtrot in both arms, hefting her as if she was little more than a girl-sized pillow. "We've got them, boss. Get us to the labs," he reassured, and other hybrids came forward, gathering up the Dozen.

"Over here," Cutter ordered, darting down the hall. He went to one of the interface screens, using his sleeve to wipe the thick layer of dust off its surface. Praying silently, he sent up a mental prayer as the screen flickered to life. Most of the future technology here was beyond him, but he'd gleaned enough from his year in the Triassic compound to know what he was looking for. "The labs we need for the Dozen are in the sublevels. We'll have to go down the elevator shafts. Pray to God they still work," he said.

Striding down the hall, Cutter approached the elevator and jammed the button. He could hardly believe his luck, but the doors hissed open.

"How the hell is all this stuff still working?" Stephen wondered as they stepped into the elevator. It was larger than normal, and all of them could stand in it comfortably with room for more. The doors hissed shut and they felt the familiar lurch in their stomachs as the elevator moved downwards, plummeting to the sublevels.

"It probably runs on solar power instead of petrol, or something else like it," Cutter replied. "The compound in the Triassic was the same way. Future technology. Nothing like it."

When the doors whispered open again, the sight that greeted them was unlike the one upstairs. The upstairs level had been dim and somewhat grimy, layered with a thick film of dust, with bits of plant debris and broken bits of something or another. But down here, everything was still blindingly clean, polished and white, the lights still on and bright. Except for the fact that it was entirely deserted, there was no sign that this part of the Complex had ever been uninhabited; the scientists that once worked there might as well have just stepped out for lunch.

"That's not creepy at all," muttered Becker under his breath.

"Down here. The labs are down here," Cutter continued, leading them down the eerily clean hallways, every step and word they spoke echoing in the utter stillness of the air. He figured that the Complex must've been built to run on its own, even without the people there. The air still felt clean, not stale at all, and the lights came on normally. What frightened him most, though, was the utter lack of scent in the air. No familiar people smell, no scent of latex or chemical or floor cleaner. After so long, the scents had probably all faded away, leaving behind a rather disturbing sensory void. From the uncomfortable looks on the other hybrids' faces, they smelt it as well.

Cutter turned around, then said, "Oi, in here. Right here, this lab," he said, pointing to the door of a lab. Walking up to it, he swore as he spotted the keypad access. They couldn't get inside without a passcode and an access card. "You've got to be bloody kidding me." With a snarling roar, he smashed his fist down on the keypad; it shattered beneath his hand, cutting his knuckles raw and sending a mild shock of electricity up his arm, but then, to his surprise, the doors of the lab slid open with a hiss of pressurised air. "Oh. How 'bout that?" he murmured in surprise.

"Nice work, boss," Schulyer chortled half-heartedly.

As they walked into the lab, Cutter said, "Set them on the tables, there." He gestured to the row of tables on the far side of the lab. A part of him idly noticed that there were twelve tables exactly. They gently laid the prone forms of the Dozen on the tables; the black-clad people only twitched and whimpered, not opening their eyes. It almost looked like they were caught in the midst of a fitful nightmare as they slept. "Right…you lot, spread out, start looking through the other labs, see if you can't find anything about the impulse regulators, yeah? We'll handle this," he said, and the hybrids hastened out of the lab, spreading out down the hallways.

As Cutter turned back to the control panels, the interactive screens flickering to life, Jenny came up beside his side. _"Do_ you know how to handle this?" she asked softly.

"That…is an excellent question," he answered just as softly, scrolling through the different files, trying to find something. "Manticore," he said, pulling up the one file that he knew had to do with the Dozen. Project Manticore had been the title of the programme that'd produced the Dozen in the first place. As he opened the file and started flicking through the programmes—he couldn't understand most of it, as the terms were so technical and complex that some of it, the only words he recognised were _a, and, an, the,_ and _of._ But the one thing he did recognise was another small file with the heading _Overlord Protocol._ "Gotcha," he murmured softly, pulling up the file.

Suddenly, Connor let out a shriek of pain, writhing on the table, hands fisted in his hair. Around, the others were also moaning and squirming in agony.

 _God help me,_ Cutter prayed silently, then typed a code into the interface and activated the uplink.

The Dozen instantly went silent, falling still on the tables, unmoving. If not for the faintest movement of their chests as they breathed, they might've been dead.

Abby touched Connor's dark hair, brushing it back out of his face, then looked up at Cutter. "What'd you do?" she asked, her voice soft and concerned. It tore at something in her heart to see Connor in such pain, and she had been able to feel a ghost-echo of that agony inside her own mind through their connection, distantly feel the sensation of mentally falling apart.

"I shut down Overlord Protocol. I hope," he added almost under his breath. "I'm not sure if it works or not, but at least now they're not going to…" He made a gesture to his head. Letting out a heavy breath of relief, he took a step forward and placed a hand on Abby's shoulder. "Stay here with him. Talk to him. See if you can't bring him back around," he said gently; if anyone could bring Connor Temple out of this strange pseudo-coma it would be Abby Maitland.

The blond nodded, climbing up onto the table and lifting Connor's head and shoulders into her lap, lightly stroking his hair.

Cutter straightened back up, turning to look at his team. "Stephen, you'll stay here with Abby?" he asked, and the tracker nodded. "Good. Becker, you go with Quinn, help the hybrids start looking around these labs. There could be something worthwhile here. Sarah, you come with me. Jenny—"

"I'm coming with you," she said firmly, her voice leaving no room for argument.

A small grin pulled at his lips. "Yes, ma'am."

As they started to split off, Stephen reached out to grasp his arm. "Nick…what about Helen?" he asked.

The same question had been nudging at his attention for a while now. Cutter didn't know if she thought they wouldn't be brave enough to venture into the future to reach the Complex, or if she was plotting something much worse on the sidelines, but the thought was still burning in him. "I don't know," he answered truthfully. "But everyone keep an eye out. Don't stray far from each other. Might want to keep the safety off," he added with a glance towards the rifle in Stephen's hands.

As they split up and headed down the halls, Cutter suddenly turned and hugged Jenny tightly to his chest, almost lifting her off the floor. She didn't say anything, just hugged him back; it wasn't until Sarah cleared her throat awkwardly that he let her back down to the floor. "Sorry," he murmured.

Sarah smirked. "Stay focused, would you?"

* * *

The silent screams had grown so loud, so very loud they were utterly deafening, eliminating all other noises; not even the singing of his sweet Abby-bird could break through it. The silence was there, so huge and enormous, enveloping everything. It screamed and cried and wailed, the noise echoing off of the walls of his mind and causing more cracks to form and more pieces to fall. Scarlet-black-ash-cerulean colours swamped through his mind, jagged pieces rose in his throat and cut him so badly that when he opened his mouth, all that came out was screaming, an echo of the silent noise that reverberated in his own skull.

 _I hear them, I hear them all. I hear them, and they say nothing. They only lay down. They just lay down. I hear them and they say nothing! Nothing! Make it stop, make it stop, I don't want to hear them anymore! Please, someone, everyone, anyone, just make them stop, please, please, please, I can't take any more!_ He wanted to scream it, but the broken pieces only fell out of his mouth as screaming and screaming and screaming.

Overlord was devouring him whole, his pieces being ripped apart, the fabric of what made him himself being unravelled and shredded to ribbons. He was dying whilst alive, trapped, trapped inside the hell of his own crumbling mind. He wanted to speak, to beg them to kill him, to simply let him _die_ , but all that came out was the blood and broken bits.

But then it was gone. A flood of icy cool washed through his mind, a wave of white that washed out the colours and swallowed up Overlord, spitting out all his scattered little bits and pieces to rebuild, the cracks and fissures sealing, the fabric weaving itself back together, and the silent screaming going quiet. Connor-Echo lay there, unmoving, just breathing, letting his heart beat, waiting for the shattering presence of Overlord to return. Except that it didn't. There was nothing. No more screaming. Just soft whisperings of his own thoughts and the humming of the silver cord and the sweet song of Abby-bird in his mind and the faint presence of Stephen-tortoise just a few feet away from him. Overlord was gone. It was finished.

But he was still broken. All his pieces were scattered everywhere. But they were not as far-flung this time. They remembered how to be put together. The shining core drew them in, fitting them back as they were supposed to be. Connor drew them all in, reassembling himself, putting himself back together. The Manticore had been reset. Overlord Protocol was no longer. He was free. He had at last severed the last threads of the spider's silk that tied him up inside. Clinging to his Abby-bird, he rebuilt himself once more as he knew the others were.

They would be whole.

They would sever the spider's web once and for all.

They would be free.


	22. City of Wolves

Abby stroked Connor's silky black hair, gently murmuring soft words into his ear, keeping her voice low enough that Stephen couldn't hear. He was still breathing, which was a good thing, but his pallor and stillness were disturbing. She'd seen him like this only once before, when he'd first mentally broken in the ARC, when he'd stopped being Echo and started being Connor again. _Oh, Conn, please wake up,_ she thought desperately, trying to channel her thoughts through their link, cord, whatever the hell it was. Whatever connection they shared, it was hard to describe, and even more impossible to try and grasp. She could only just hold onto it, and she could feel Connor's mind through it. Right now, though, all she could feel was mental static, and it scared her more than she would've thought. "Connor, c'mon. You've got to wake up, love."

Stephen walked along the row of tables, looking at the pale, still forms of the rest of the Dozen. It was said people looked younger when they slept. That wasn't quite true. They looked peaceful, like all the stress and fear and pain had just been stripped away to reveal the person underneath. They looked so…frail, fragile almost, like they were made out of spun glass and would shatter if he breathed too hard. Stopping at the foot of the table Quebec laid on, he barely resisted the temptation to reach out and brush the black strands of hair off her cheeks, grasp one of her little hands in his own and coax her into waking up the way Abby was to Connor. _C'mon, Q. Wake up. You can do this,_ he thought. Closing his eyes for a moment, he remembered how it'd felt to hold her in his arms, pin her warm body between himself and the wall, the softness of her lips on his own. His fingers twitched slightly, itching to reach out and hold her like that again, but he held himself back, adjusting his grip on the rifle instead and stepping back to stand by the door once more. _Wonder what Cutter and the others are doing._

* * *

"Oh, my God. This is unbelievable. Look at all this stuff," murmured Sarah quietly as she ran her fingertips across the interactive screen in front of her, scrolling down the list of files. There were things here that went above and beyond her own knowledge of science, things that didn't even seem possible except in the realm of pure science-fiction. "Looks like something out of one of Connor's sci-fi novels or something."

Standing nearby, Cutter had to agree. He wasn't anywhere near as skilled as Connor was in hacking past firewalls and other such security measures, but there weren't too many obstacles to be found. Apparently, nobody had thought anyone that could make it into the sublevels at all could be bothered with such trifling things. He'd pulled up everything in the database about the hybrids, including their names, ages, the dates of the locations they were taken from, everything, including himself. On a stray bit of paper he'd found, he was busily scratching down locations and dates so they could begin sending the hybrids home to their proper time zones once everything had been finished.

He opened one file and sighed quietly at the information that shone back at him from the screen: _Lafayette, Schulyer Marie. Age: 15 years. Source Point: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, August 14th, 1643._

"She's only fifteen," Jenny whispered incredulously from his side, peering over his shoulder at the screen. He leant ever-so-slightly towards her warmth, drawing security from her close proximity. "My God, Nick…"

"Sixteen now," he corrected automatically. Not that it made it any better. She was still a girl, practically a child, at the age where she should be worrying about getting good marks in class and finding a boyfriend, not fighting animal instincts in a twisted game of hide-and-seek with a madwoman. A vague corner of his mind wondered which total berk decided it'd be a good idea to give a hormone-addled, emotionally-unstable teenaged girl animal instincts. Even so, he still admired the stubborn, tenacious way she held on despite the madness that'd transpired. She had one hell of a learning curve to her, having been yanked out of the mid 1600s and thrust into a world of technology centuries beyond her own time. He resolved to try and send her home first, get her back to the family that no doubt was worried ill.

"Hey, Cutter…" called Sarah. "Come take a look at this…"

* * *

"This place gives me the creeps," Danny mumbled under his breath as he walked up the hallway with Becker at his elbow. The floors were white, the walls were white, and the ceiling was white. Everything was blindingly, glaringly, utterly _white._ It was as if everything was carved out of marble or ivory, and it kinda did freak him out; right now, the two of them were the only spots of colour in the entire corridor. Anything that wasn't white was polished chrome or stainless steel, cold and grey. It was eerily monochromatic.

"Agreed," Becker said quietly. He stood out like a sore thumb more than anyone else did, dressed in his all black SAS uniform.

Cutter had sent them out on patrol, which was kind of insulting, seeing as how everyone else was investigating the labs, but both men weren't going to kid themselves. They were brawn, not brains. Sarah and Cutter and Stephen, they were scientists; they knew this technology and this science. Becker could field-strip a weapon in under thirty seconds, but hell if he could make heads or tails of any of this. Danny could take down a runner at fifty paces, but he still pronounced it like _'amonaly'_ instead and couldn't tell the difference between an allosaurus and a tyrannosaurus if they danced it out in front of him. They were security, and well, they were perfectly happily being security. The science stuff made Danny's head hurt, and Becker thought that scientists were crazy and had no desire to become one.

As they walked down the stark white halls, listening for any sound that could mean danger, the only noise that disturbed the air was the soft shuffle of their own footsteps, the whisper of their clothes and breathing. As Becker stepped around the corner, he didn't even have the time to react as he felt a pair of arms wind around him like steel bands, a damp cloth clamping down over his mouth and nose; the raw stench of chloroform seared his nose, and through rapidly blurring vision, he saw another dark shape grab hold of Danny. He barely managed to think _bloody hell…_ before unconsciousness overtook his mind.

* * *

"Look at this," murmured Schulyer in a quiet voice as she stepped up to a glass case, tightly sealed and locked. Inside were dozens of tiny metallic chips, less than half the size of her little fingernail, lined up in protective plastic cases.

Cherry came up at her right side, Zane at her left, and they both peered into the case as well. "The impulse regulator chips," said Cherry quietly, her warm breath tickling Schulyer's cheek.

"They're so tiny," Zane noted with a kind of awe in his voice.

"Things do not have to be big to be powerful," Schulyer replied. "Bees are tiny, but it still hurts to get stung." Still, it was incredible, to think that a wee little thing like that, barely a sliver of metal and silicone, could go into her brain and repress her animal instinct, the need to hunt, stalk, and kill those weaker than her, those that were _prey._ She wasn't even sure she believed it entirely, but she trusted Cutter. If he said that these things could get rid of the animal inside her, she believed him.

And if these things really could suppress her inner beast, then that meant she could go home. There was nothing she could do about the odd colour of her hair now, or her heightened senses, but she could see her mother and her sisters and her father again. She could sleep in her own bed and talk to her own friends. It was a dizzying thought, and one that made her chest ache with a fierce longing for home. Yet again, she knew that she could trust Cutter. The older man had yet to steer them wrong, no matter how difficult things appeared, no matter how impossible she believed them to be, and even if the animal in her was pushed away into her subconscious, he would always be leader of the pride.

Lightly touching the glass case with her fingertips, she stepped away and turned back towards the door. "I'm going to find the others—" Schulyer began to say, then froze as her keen ears picked up the sound of another heartbeat. Even as her head turned, she could see the fist coming towards her face, and not even feline reflexes could stop it before the blow crashed into her face and threw her to the floor. Before she could even begin to rise from the floor, ears ringing and blood in her mouth, a boot came down on her shoulder, forcing her back to her stomach with a grunt. A sharp needle stabbed into her upper arm, and almost instantly, her vision began to distort and waver, muscles going lax; out the corner of her eye, she saw several more canid hybrids wrestling Cherry and Zane to the ground, stabbing them both with needles as well. _Bastards do not even have the guts to fight us face-to-face..._ she thought woozily.

* * *

Sometimes, going crazy wasn't all that terrible. Connor was almost starting to like it. Now, being so crazy that he couldn't tell who or when or where he was, that was not very fun. But the rest of it was. People didn't _observe_ anything. They _saw_ but they did not _observe._ To them, everything was a fresco painted on a wall; if they could not see it, then it did not exist. Things were not a fresco to him. They could not be two-dimensional and flat. They had to have sound and colour and texture and taste and smell in order to pass out of the realm of being _ideas_ and into the realm of being _stuff._ His own inscape, where everything was made of his crazy bits and pieces, all put together around a shining core, had more dimension than most people's lives did.

He could feel _everything._ Oh, it was lovely. Before, when Overlord had been stripping him away layer by layer, it'd been painful and agonising, jagged blades and broken shards raking their way across his nerves and turning him to ribbons of torn flesh and blood. But now that it had been removed, and the silent screaming eliminated, he could feel it all washing across his skin, soft as the brush of velvet. He felt his Abby-bird holding him gently, stroking his hair in a way that was positively sinful in its delightfulness, murmuring soft words to try and wake him. He felt all his brothers and sisters nearby, as they too stretched their thoughts, testing their new limits, tasting what it was like to have a mind free of an undermining Overlord eating away at it, without the silent voices rebounding across their heads like jagged echoes. And there was Stephen, too, a strong stone tortoise that was cool blue on the outside, underlain by heartfelt reds and worried yellows.

His whole body felt new, a serpent that'd just shed his skin to reveal the strong new form underneath the old, scarred one. He felt his muscles and bones and joints all working together in a way that felt absolutely wonderful. Taking a deep breath to feel his lungs push against his ribs, he shifted over onto his back, tilting his head up to look at his little bird, who's feathers had gone all ruffled in hopefulness. He smiled up at her. "Hello, little bird," he greeted quietly.

"Oh, Connor!" she cried, wrapping both arms around him and hugging him tightly.

He laughed, revelling in the warm wash of silvery colour that flooded forward through their link, bathing over him in shimmering hues. Looking around, he realised that they stood within the underground passages of the Complex itself; he hadn't even noticed it before, so broken had he been. He got to his feet only to be wrapped in a tight, surprising embrace by the stone tortoise, strong enough to almost lift him off the floor a moment. "You have never hugged me before," Connor noted.

Stephen lowered his arm and stepped back. "Yeah, well, it's not every day that one of my best friends almost has a psychotic breakdown and nearly becomes a psycho killing machine," he answered, attempting for disaffected, though a genuine relief shone in his eyes, rippling in his thoughts. Stepping around Connor, he went around to look at the other members of the Dozen, also sitting up and coming back around.

"Connor," Abby said gently, drawing his attention back to her. She reached into her jacket and pulled out his steel fangs, holding them out to him. "Becker knew that you'd be alright. Said you'd probably want these back," she said with a smile in her eyes.

"The tree is wise," he answered, taking the knives and sliding them back into the sheathes at each hip. He felt far better knowing that he had them at his sides. Abby had also brought his long knife as well, the one that laid across his back and was almost as long as he was tall from waist to shoulder. The smaller throwing knives and the thin ones that went in his boots had been left behind. He didn't mind. This was more than enough. Leaning in, he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. "Come now, we must find the tiger and the porcelain doll. The spider will soon arrive with her hellhounds, and it would be wise not to linger," he said, taking her by the hand and leading her out of the room.

* * *

Cutter felt a little giddy. The artefact was some kind of device that could predict anomalies, pulling up a swirling, sparkling projection that, he noted with some satisfaction, looked almost identical to his time map. Sarah had found the file, and a few moments' searching had proved him right. If they could unlock the anomaly, then they would be able to know exactly when and where the next anomaly was supposed to appear. "And _you_ thought my time map was ridiculous," he muttered with a glance towards Jenny.

Her expression went indignant. "I did not! I just said it probably would've been easier to do on a computer. I never said it was ridiculous," she protested.

"Sure, sure."

As he ran through the other files on the computer, he paused suddenly when he found one that contained information on the canid hybrids. He pulled up the file, reading over the information that appeared on the screen in front of him. And the more that he read, the more his stomach sank into his toes. A sick feeling of dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. "My God..."

"What is it, Nick?" Jenny asked, hand on his shoulder.

"Problem. Big, big problem." Nausea ran through him so powerfully that he was almost certain he'd end up revisiting his lunch. "There's more canids than I thought there were. Helen...she must've gone to other compounds after the one in the Triassic was destroyed. She's got more of them," he said hoarsely, mouth dry as cotton. The test subjects' files were right there in front of him, and even looking at them directly, he had trouble trying to grasp the number, turn it to something concrete. He had no fear of the vacant Cleaner clones; they were slow-witted things to be easily taken apart. He would gladly take them over the canids any day. But with these numbers, Helen would have no use for the Cleaners ever again. Why would she? He grasped the edge of the counter tightly, allowing his head to hang forward, briefly overcome by a feeling of utter helplessness. They were so utterly _boned..._ Even with all his hybrids on their side, even if the Dozen managed to wake up, they would have no chance.

Over the rushing noise in his ears, he abruptly realised that Jenny was still talking to him. "Nick, answer me. How many more are there? How many canids?" she demanded, voice strained with worry, gripping his wrist. Sarah hovered at the woman's elbow, her own face anxious as she watched the professor.

"Hundreds. _Hundreds."_

Both women went ashen, recoiling as if the words had physically struck them. He saw Sarah's lips mutely form the word 'hundreds' though she made no sound.

Cutter straightened up, resolve sharpening within him. "C'mon. We need to get the others and leave. Now."

As they walked out of the lab into the hall, Cutter nearly collided with another body coming towards him. His breath rushed out in a huff when he recognised Connor, standing in front of him real as bloody life, and looking perfectly fine. Stephen and Abby stood close behind him, though only Quebec, Whiskey, and Foxtrot were there as well. "You're alright," he said, unable to think of anything more to say.

"Yes, I am, as are the others. Professor, we must go quickly. The spider comes, and she has far more hounds than before. We are gravely outnumbered, and there is only one way out of this sublevel," Connor replied urgently. "We much reach the elevator shaft before—" His voice cut off as a shudder went through him from head to toe, like a flick passing down a length of rope; behind him, the other three shivered the same way. When his eyes opened again, there was a glassy look to them. "Too late. She is here."


	23. Forged in Fire and Blood

The elevator they'd come down in was connected to an enormous atrium, twice the size of a football stadium, by a short corridor. At the opposite end was the hall that lead into the other labs. Cutter grasped Jenny's hand tightly in his own as they walked into the atrium. At the other end stood Helen. She was dressed in a black outfit not dissimilar to the Dozen's, a splash of colour in the blinding white surroundings. With her stood eight canid hybrids, standing with feet braced apart, hands clasped in front of them, faces blank. There were only eight, but Cutter could smell the thick, almost sickeningly powerful stench of the other canids; no doubt they were waiting on the level above, just waiting to pour down the elevator shaft.

Helen strode forward confidently, heels clicking and echoing in the utter silence. Her scent was…off. He couldn't put his finger on it. It wasn't feline, it wasn't canid, it wasn't even like the Dozen, but it certainly wasn't human. She'd done something to herself. "Well, well, well. Looks like the Scooby Gang is all here," she said, raking her gaze across them, settling on Connor, Foxtrot, Whiskey, and Quebec. Her gaze flickered from one to another, searching for any sign of insanity; when she didn't see any, she gave a cold facsimile of a smile. "And you've managed to fix them as well. I'm impressed."

"What do you want from us, Helen?" Cutter asked.

"Well, Nick…here's the thing. I thought that making you into a hybrid would change things. I thought things would turn out a lot differently than they did. You, and them—" She nodded towards the members of the Dozen. "—you were supposed to be more than this. But you refused. I could've given you…everything. And you throw it all away for these…people, these _humans._ " She sneered the word. "Now you're a liability. You have to be eliminated. I can't have you running about, ruining everything I've worked for."

"Spider of doors," said Connor, his low voice ringing through the silence; Helen looked towards him, not at all surprised nor confused by his name for her. "If you must eliminate us, then do so. But Sarah, Abby, Jenny, Becker, Stephen, and Danny are human. They are not hybrids, they are not as we are. Let them go home."

Again, that cold facsimile of a smile, like a predator baring its teeth in warning. "Why would I do that? The ARC will be stopped either way, and since I have all of you here now, I might as well kill two birds with one stone. The only way out of here is the elevator shaft behind me, and all of the canids are already waiting for you. You're trapped. So I'll just take care of all of you right now." She pulled a small black device from her jacket, the liquid crystal display lighting up as she pressed a button on its side. As she typed codes into the display, she began backing away towards the elevator shaft; the canids didn't move from where they stood. "Have fun being devoured. I'll be back later to mop up what's left. Goodbye, darling," she said in a false, saccharine-sweet voice. As the elevator doors began sliding shut, she held up the device and pressed a button. The doors closed.

The canids suddenly moved, their whole bodies shuddering. All at once, a terrible snarling, growling noise began tearing out of them. They began clawing at themselves, pulling at their hair. The smell of blood filled the air as their claws raked bloody furrows into their own arms and faces, not even heeding the pain, snarling. A faint echo of the sound rippled down the elevator shaft. Suddenly, one of the canids lurched forward, teeth bared, claws out as it lunged towards them, snarling and roaring. Stephen cursed, lifting his gun and firing at the hybrid. The bullet tore through its shoulder, but it didn't even miss a step, lunging towards Sarah, who screamed and tried to back away. Whiskey strode forward before it could reach her, driving his knife through its heart.

He recognised that kind of mad determination. He knew with sudden chilling understanding, what Helen had done. "Run! Get away! She's sent them feral! Run," Cutter shouted.

Connor turned and sprinted to the wall, prising off the control panel and tearing at the wires. Suddenly, with a grind of metal, a set of thick blast doors began closing. "Quickly, through here," he cried, shoving Abby through the doors. "They will come down the elevator shaft. Run!"

They darted back down the hallway towards the labs, jumping through the narrowing gap between the doors as the canid hybrids snarled and barked, sprinting across the distance towards them with animal shrieks, the chilling sound of hyenas laughing. Cutter helped Sarah through the gap and jumped through last, landing safely on the other side.

Suddenly, one of the canids, putting on a superhuman burst of speed, sprinted ahead of the others, leapt through the gap just before it closed, and slammed into Jenny, taking her to the ground. Cutter was certain that his heart actually stopped for several beats as she screamed, the agonising sound ripping through him. The scent of blood, her blood, reached his nose, and the animal in him roared with fury. Whirling around, he brought his foot up beneath the canid's jaw. He heard its neck snap clean from the force of the blow, teeth and jaw shattering like glass. The force was enough to fling the canid backwards, skidding several inches across the slick floor of the corridor.

Jenny was gasping for breath, trying not to sob aloud in pain; the canid's claws had raked bloody stripes down her arms, shredding her blouse, and its teeth had ripped into the tender flesh of her stomach. Cutter scooped her up into his arms, her sobbed cry of pain tearing at his heart. "It's alright, love, I've got you," he murmured.

"Professor! Down here!" Connor shouted, and he hastened to catch up with them. He made his way across the empty atrium and darted down the short corridor into a rather huge room stacked with dozens of large crates, the missing members of the Deadly Dozen waiting there, armed with knives at the ready. The rest of his feline hybrids were there, gagged, tied up, and beaten all to hell. Becker and Danny were slumped up against the crates as well, equally trussed up. Carrying Jenny into the room, he gently laid her down on one of the crates, folded the shredded bits of her shirt over the wound in her stomach, and pressed down; she let out a keening groan of pain, gripping his wrist tightly. "Sorry, I'm sorry, baby. It'll be alright. It's not too deep. You'll be okay," he murmured under his breath. Without taking his focus off Jenny, he called, "Sarah, untie the felines, see if you can't wake up Becker and Danny."

As the Egyptologist started unbinding the hybrids, Abby slapped the captain and copper awake, pulling the gags out of their mouths. "Oi! Enough with the beauty sleep, you're ravishing already," she said.

Becker shifted and groaned. "Oh, bloody hell. That bitch. Where is she? I'm gonna—" His voice cut off when he saw that everyone was in the room, the other tied-up hybrids, the bloodstains on their clothes, and the strained looks of fear and worry. "What's going on?"

"Short version: canids are rabid, there's currently only a blast door between us and them, and we have about two minutes before they get through and rip us all to shreds," answered Cutter brusquely. "Have you got a field bandage?"

The captain rolled to his feet, staggering, a little groggy, then made his way over to them. He pulled out a packet of sterile bandages, passing them over to the professor. "How many canids are we talking about?" he asked.

"At least five hundred." Cutter ripped open the package, folding the bandages over Jenny's stomach and wincing as she cried out in pain; her face was ashen, streaked with tears, lips trembling. One of her hands gripped his arm tight enough to bruise, breath shuddering. "There's a set of blast doors keeping them in the front hall for now, but they're going to get through it soon."

"How do we get out?"

Cutter gritted his teeth. "The only way out is through them. Helen's sent them all feral. They're animals now, nothing more. Rabid. They'll rip us apart," he ground out. "What about them?" he asked, jerking his head towards the forms of Schulyer and the other feline hybrids.

"Drugged," said India. "They will be unconscious from the next seven to eight hours. Quite ineffective."

The sound of the hybrids was growing ever-louder, a cacophony of inhuman snarling, growling, and barking gurgling through the atrium and corridor into their little room. Cutter knew that there was too many of them to be defeated. There was no way they could win this. He had seen the number of hybrids on the list—dozens, hundreds if not more—and he knew that if all them had been turned feral, they'd be torn apart, quite literally.

"Nick?" said Jenny's soft voice, and he turned to look at her, face pale and flecked with blood. He couldn't think of anything to say. Her dark gaze moved across his face, read his expression, and he saw the realisation come into her eyes. She laced her fingers into his, holding tightly.

He squeezed her hand tightly. "Connor, do you think you can close the doors to this room, block us off from the atrium?" he asked quietly, not letting go of Jenny's hand.

The young man came closer, looking into the panel, examining the wires. "Yes. Can be rerouted so as to be held closed. But will not last. Will eventually fall," he murmured, looking up at the professor. He took in the expression on his and Jenny's faces. "You know this. Too many come. We will not survive," he said. His voice didn't rise above a murmur, yet in the silence, it seemed to reverberate.

"Cutter?" Stephen mumbled softly, looking up at him from where he sat on the floor, nursing the bloody scrape down his arm received climbing through the doors.

"I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely. "I'm so sorry."

Connor turned to look at the rest of the Dozen, then crossed the room to Abby. She put her hands on his chest, looking up at him with sorrowful blue eyes. "I am sorry, Abby," he murmured quietly.

"For what?" she asked.

"For what must be done. I promised."

A slightly panicked look came to her face. "What do you mean? What promise?" she asked fearfully, tightening her grip on his jacket.

He brushed his fingers across her cheek. "To keep you safe."

Cutter looked over and saw the torn wires inside the panel, and he heard the doors begin to grind close. The Dozen sprinted out of the doors, leaping through the narrowly-closing gap, and Connor ripped away from Abby even as the blond let out a dismayed cry, diving through the door just as it slammed shut.

Abby let out a scream, running towards the control panel. Cutter released Jenny's hand, looping an arm around her waist. "No! No!" she shouted, writhing in his grip like a wild animal, spitting and hissing. He was shocked at the force at with she struggled, and he had to put a measure of his animal strength into restraining her.

"Abby, _stop_. Stop, stop it. It's over," he growled in her ear even as the words tore at his heart. "It's over." _Oh, God, Connor…I'm so sorry._

She went limp in his arms, stopping her struggle and just falling to the floor. Connor was gone. Her sweet, crazy warrior-nerd was going to die, and there was nothing, nothing that she could do. Except….

Closing her eyes, she reached for all the love she held for him, all the emotions that she'd kept secreted away, and tried to push it through whatever connection that linked them. She had never been one for words, so she wouldn't try to speak. She'd just feel and hoped that he saw it. She poured it all forward, everything she'd ever felt for him, trying to put a lifetime of love into what few seconds were left before those hybrids broke through. It could very well be the only time they had. Abby bowed her head as if in prayer and loved him with everything that she had.

* * *

"They come," said Whiskey quietly, drawing his knives as all others did.

"Yes." Connor took a step back, putting more space between him and the blast doors at the opposite end of the atrium and therefore allowing himself a few extra microseconds in which to think. And when he did so, his back met the closed door, the only barrier that lay between him and the rest of his family: Stephen, Becker, Jenny, Sarah, Danny, Cutter…and Abby.

 _His_ Abby.

He could feel her, pouring forward all of the heart she kept so guarded from the world, in one great burst of _I love you._ His head snapped up. "Anchored," he whispered hoarsely, then reached for the programming that lay dormant within his brain, within all of their brains, just where the spider had seared it into them, and triggered it of his own will.

The blast doors burst open, and the rabid hybrids poured forwards.

* * *

Abby had stopped struggling to get at the door, just sat there on the floor, not breathing or moving overmuch, which worried Cutter more than anything. He kept one eye on her as he looked after Jenny, tearing off strips of fabric from his coat—he would never be able to wear it after this, anyways—and binding up her arm. He could count on the fingers of one hand the things that truly frightened Abby, and the canid hybrids was one of those things, yet she had fought against him with everything she had trying to get to the door. No, not to the door—to Connor on the other side. He couldn't even begin to imagine how she felt. To experience that kind of pain, finding the one man she had ever truly and wholly loved only to have him torn away from her, was beyond his comprehension. He gripped Jenny's hand a little tighter.

* * *

The silver cord was singing in perfect harmony with the ringing of blades, though it was partially drowned out beneath the shrieking and howling of the hybrids that surrounded them. Connor had lost one of his knives amidst the frothing sea of bodies, and he drew his sword instead, eviscerating one and plunging the sword through the heart of another.

Around him, the others were fighting just as fast, moving quick and feverishly, cutting down one feral hybrid after another, the snarling of the hellhounds rebounding everywhere, turning the air around them to a churning maelstrom of red-black. Blood spurted onto his face, but he ignored the spatter of warm rain. He did not have to say 'duck'. It appeared in his mind, and Zulu obeyed, ducking low so he could swing the blade and decapitate the hybrid about to leap onto her back. The bodies of the fallen were dragged out of the way, shoved off to the side by the oncoming tide, clearing the floor, which was already slick with blood.

Connor fought, the spider's training blurring into his own knowledge as he killed again and again, over and over, becoming the weapon he had crafted of all his disparate parts for the sakes of all those he loved.

* * *

After several eternities, though it was really only about five minutes, Stephen's head came up. He had been sitting off to the side, back to the wall, head bowed between his knees. "Am I going mad," he murmured hoarsely, "or is it getting quieter out there?"

Cutter had been desperately trying _not_ to listen—he didn't want to hear his student being torn apart by the canids—but now he strained his feline hearing to its limits. "You're not going mad," he replied quietly. "It _is_ quieter."

"C-could they b-be givin' up?" Sarah whispered in a tremulous voice, clutching to Danny as if he was the only thing tying her to the planet.

"Canids don't give up," Cutter replied, staring at the door in puzzlement and disbelief. Once they'd caught a scent, they didn't give up for anything. They were the most relentless hunters in all the world and would outlive God tracking their prey. Which could only mean one thing…but it was impossible. Jumping to his feet, he strode towards the door, tilting his head to better listen.

Abby was on her feet already, her ear pressed to the steel door itself. "There's fewer of them," she whispered, voice thread-thin, almost inaudible.

He could barely believe it, but it was true. Now they were all holding their breaths, straining their ears to listen. It was faint, but still audible—the sound of a howling shriek being cut short. Then another. And another. The dull, muffled thud of a body dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Metal ground together as the door began to open. Cutter looped an arm around Abby and dragged her back with him, reaching for his gun as the others all stood up, tense and wary.

A canine hybrid fell through the doorway first, lacking a head. Braced on the corpse's back was a boot with a gleaming, bloodstained blade protruding from the toe. Their disbelieving gazes rose to see the Deadly Dozen standing there, covered in gore, surrounded on all sides by the bodies of the canine hybrids, all of them. The dead bodies were piled up everywhere, lining the sides of the atrium stretching clear back to the elevator shaft nearly thirty feet away; the floor was swimming in blood, not a single spot of white to be seen, crimson streaks marring the walls. Connor stood at their head, his sword in one hand, knife in the other. Bloody gore dripped from the blades and soaked his arms to the elbow; it was in his hair, all over his clothes, and streaked his face like the war paint of an Indian brave. His eyes were focused solely on Abby, and in their depths was a flicker of trepidation. _This is what I am,_ he thought, allowing it to ripple across their cord, ringing clear in her mind. _Will you run away, now that you see it all?_

For a moment, there was only silence as the two groups stared at each other, unable to believe it, but then Abby was scrabbling to her feet and half-running, half-tripping across the distance towards Connor, arms outstretched. He dropped his weapons with a _clang_ and opened his arms to her. She embraced him, gory clothes and all, and kissed his bloodied face over and over, sobbing in relief. He held her tight, as if she was the only thing that kept him in one piece. Over the blond's shoulder, the young man looked to his professor with silent question in his eyes.

Cutter felt a small, weary grin come to his face. "Yeah. Let's go home," he said softly. "Let's all go home."


	24. Homeward Bound

_St. Anthony's Hospital, Present Day_

Jenny was disappointed.

She thought that the afterlife was supposed to be all tunnels of white light leading to pearly gates and angels singing, that kind of thing. But it wasn't. In fact, this afterlife was chilly and uncomfortable, and it smelled a bit like antiseptic…. She cracked open one eye to see Cutter sitting beside her bed, his head resting against her thigh with eyes closed; his strong, callused fingers were wrapped around her hand, holding tight even in sleep. _So…not the afterlife, then._ She swallowed awkwardly, throat dry, feeling like her head was padded with cotton, and croaked out, "Nick."

His eyes opened at once, head lifting from her leg. "Jenny? You back with me, love?" he asked, squeezing her hand gently.

A weary smile pulled at the corner of her lips as she dipped her head in a tiny nod. "Di' I die?" she mumbled thickly, her tongue not quite willing to shape the words properly.

Cutter let out a heavy breath, lifting her hand and pressing his lips to her palm. "No, but you sure did try," he rasped out, holding her hand against his cheek; she could see a new scrape on his cheekbone and lightly rubbed her thumb across the tiny wound, gently caressing the planes of his face. "Don't you ever frighten me like that again, Jennifer Lewis," he murmured thickly, turning his face into her hand, but even in her drugged state, she didn't miss the dampness on his lashes. "I thought I'd lost you. I love you, Jenny, so much."

She swallowed hard again, though this time it wasn't because of a dry throat that she had difficulty. She knew him well enough to know that he didn't often say words like that, which meant she must've come closer to the real afterlife than she thought. "Love you, too," she whispered back. "Wha' hap'n'd? E'ryone a'righ'?"

He let her hand back down to the bed, but he didn't loosen his grip. Not that she wanted him to, anyways. "Everyone's alive. We all made it. Bruise, battered, and a bit cut up, but we're all alive," he answered, sounding as if he still couldn't believe the words he was saying.

"Th' h'brids?" she queried.

"The canids? Dead. Remember when the Dozen got into the ARC to save Whiskey, and they took out half of security?" he asked; Jenny managed a small nod once more. "That wasn't but a twinkling of their toes compared to what they did. They killed all the canid hybrids, Jenny. Every single one."

 _That_ made her drug-addled brain come a little more awake. "All?" she repeated.

He nodded, disbelief written clear across his face. "Can't quite wrap my head around it, either. A recovery team went through the anomaly after we got back, gathered up the corpses. Four hundred and fifty-six canids."

 _456\. Four hundred and fifty-six._ The number was mind-boggling, even in her state. "An' they're all alive?" she asked in awe.

"Yep. Bruised and beaten all to hell, but alive. Connor's with Abby now," he added softly.

"F'lids?" she mumbled.

"They're all being given the impulse regulator chips as we speak. Once they're all chipped, we can start sending them home, back to their proper times," he answered.

Jenny squeezed his hand as best she could. "An' you?"

Cutter paused for a moment, indecision flickering in his eyes, and then he shook his head; his rough stubble scraped against her palm. "I'm not getting it. I don't need it," he added when she frowned in concern. Smiling slightly, he kissed her palm. "When I said I loved you, I meant it. _All_ of me. I don't need the chip because you already control the animal. All I need…is you." He put his head back on her thigh, gazing up at her through his lashes, and her hand returned to his hair, lightly petting the soft waves of black and gold.

Smiling, she put her head back against the pillows, too tired to keep her eyes open anymore. She might've been hooked up to an IV, drugged out of her mind, and bedridden in a hospital, but at that moment, Jenny Lewis had never felt quite so happy.

* * *

"We did it, Abby," Stephen remarked in a soft, awed voice as they sat in the hallway of the cool hospital, uncaring of the bustle of nurses and doctors around them. Now that the adrenaline was fading away, the gravity of everything they'd done was really starting to sink in.

Sitting beside him, the petite blond gave a small nod. "We did." She was just as battered and bruised as him. There was a grubby mark on her cheek and a scrape on her jaw; her left hand was bandaged up. Her white-blond hair felt stiff with dried sweat. "I can't believe that we actually did it…but we did."

Stephen nodded as well, then glanced around. "Hey, where'd Connor go?" he asked, noticing that the dark-haired lad had yet to show up again.

There was an earsplitting crash from the sound of the medic room and raised voices echoed towards her. "That's probably him," said Abby, pushing to her feet and limping her way down the hallway, Stephen following after. And she was right. When they entered the med room, Connor was hissing and spitting like a cat, fighting off the doctors that were trying to approach him. One of them had a needle in hand, no doubt a tranquiliser.

"Oi! Back off him! Leave him alone," Stephen snapped, shoving the doctors away.

Abby made her way over to Connor, reaching out for him. He grasped her and pulled her in close, resting his chin on her shoulder and pressing his face into her hair. "Two by two in hands of blue. I don't like them," he muttered softly; she glanced over her shoulders and saw that the doctors were indeed wearing blue latex gloves. Even if he was better now, she knew that doctors still frightened him.

"It's alright. We'll handle it from here," she said, looking over her shoulder at the doctors.

"But he has to be examined—" the doctor tried to say, but Stephen levelled an icy glare at him to silence the doctor.

Abby took Connor by the hand, guiding him out the room. "Stephen, can you go rescue the others? I'm gonna look after him," she said, and the tracker nodded, heading off to find the rest of the Dozen.

She led him into an empty room and made him to sit down on the cot. A moment's plundering of the supply cabinets, and she had antiseptic and bandages piled up beside her and went to work on cleaning the numerous small wounds all over him. "Ow," he protested as she daubed antiseptic on a deep scratch on his arm.

"You big baby," she teased softly. "What did this?"

"Claws. Hurts, but good to disinfect. Fingernails carry much bacteria," he replied, wincing again as she carefully taped a bandage onto the cut. As she carefully moved across his body, cleaning him up and wiping the dried blood off his skin, Connor said gently, "Theory of entanglement."

Abby glanced up at him from where she was cleaning out scrapes on his arm. "Pardon?"

"You have embraced myself in all its forms, even though parts of me are flawed and still broken. You have accepted our cord and all it entails. We are now entwined particles," Connor said quietly, reaching out to grasp both her hands in his own. "The theory of entanglement says that if two entangled particles are separated, no matter how far they are moved apart, even if they were on opposite sides of the universe, if one is altered or affected, the other will be equally altered or affected."

A small smile came to her face as she reached up to brush her fingers across his scraped, bloodied cheek. "I love you, too," she replied softly. And she knew that what he'd said was true. They were entwined particles, the two of them. What happened to one would affect the other; they were tied together.

He smiled and wrapped both arms around her, pulling her close and kissing her, nuzzling the side of her neck. "I am yours and you are mine."

As he kissed a soft path down the side of her throat, Abby felt a little quiver in her belly. "These doors do lock, you know," she whispered, and he chortled low in his throat. Pulling away from him, she crossed the room to hit the lock, dimming the lights. When she turned back to him, he was sitting cross-legged up on the cot, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Connor?" she asked softly.

He raised his gaze to hers. His eyes were just the same as she remembered, twin pools of luminous black that seemed to go on forever, full of secret fire, framed in thick black lashes. Compared to the general pallor of his face, his eyes seemed even darker, casting bruise-like shadows beneath them. "I have rebuilt myself from the broken pieces the spider turned me to," he admitted, voice gone soft. "I am better. But…I will never be well. I have seen and done and experienced too much to ever be well again."

Abby stepped closer, climbing onto the cot to kneel in front of him, her feet tucked underneath her; sitting this close, her knees brushed his own. She reached out and took hold of his hands. His hands practically enveloped her smaller ones entirely, long fingers curled around her; his skin was a degree cooler than hers. "I know that, Conn. And you know that I've got a few broken places myself," she answered.

She knew him. She knew he was fractured and vicious and unpredictable, knew he was crazy and dangerous, crafted especially to be the ultimate killer and driven insane by torture she couldn't imagine.

He knew her. He knew she was stubborn and secretive, knew she was cautious to give trust, guarded about her feelings, hesitant to give anything of herself away, and at times hated the entire world just because she could.

And seeing the worst parts of each other, neither was looking away. Abby had her fair share of bad memories and things that she still shivered to remember, but he had nightmares that had him screaming in his sleep as well. She could feel their…link or connection, whatever the hell it was, humming between them. Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his own.

He pulled her in close to him, and Abby melted into him, fitting to him like two puzzle pieces what went together, fitting just right. The thread between them was pulling taut, drawing them in ever closer; he felt it wrapping around him, binding him up, but this time it was good because he wasn't being bound to a spider of doors, he was bound to his sweet-beneath-the-bones Abby. He was a marionette once more, but so was she, strings tied to each other so they moved as one, unable to be divided. He was coming undone again, but in the best of ways, and all his senses dissolved into heady sensation that was honey and sunlight and moonstone-shimmer and velvet and indigo and silver and caramel and blended together into nothing but a haze. They were twined together so deep that they were as one person. And he could hear the stars sing.

Abby hugged his head to her breast, stroking his thick, soft hair, her heart pounding as she managed to get her breathing back under control. She pressed her cheek to the top of his head, breathing in the scent of him. He smelled so good, like sweat and musk, and she could feel him breathing heavily against her chest. "Love, sweet love," she whispered into his hair.

"I didn't think the day I woke in the Complex could ever be supplanted," he murmured quietly.

"What do you mean?" she queried, looking down.

He pushed himself up on one elbow, looking down at her with a smile playing at his lips, strands of hair sticking to his forehead and neck with sweat. "In the course of these past twenty-four hours, I have crossed the spider's web twice, discovered the source of madness, drove the spider from her nest, remade myself into a weapon for mine own purposes, loved and was loved in return, killed 39 canine hybrids, reset all programming within the Manticore, and experienced sexual intercourse for the first time." He smiled down at her happily, scrunching up his nose in a most adorable way. "Merely waking up psychic and genetically altered does not compare."

Abby giggled aloud as she reached up to stroke his thick, soft black hair, now a little damp with sweat. The sheer absurdity of him never failed to amuse her, and she doubted that there would ever be a day that he wouldn't be able to make her laugh. "You're insane," she giggled, lifted her head, and kissed the tip of his nose.

"Quite. I consider it to be a selling point."

She brushed her fingers across his cheek. "Considering that it's just your first time…how are you feeling?"

He kissed her cheek and lowered her head to his shoulder once more. "Ecstatically fulfilled, as you very well know," he said softly, pressing a gentle kiss to her collarbone. "Sweet love," he murmured quietly, echoing her words. When she yawned, he lightly patted her hip and shifted them on the cot so he lay on his side with her pressed in close to his chest. "Time for sleep now."

"Be seeing you in my dreams?" Abby murmured into his neck, settling her head on his shoulder and already feeling sleep pulling at the edges of her mind.

"May be too tired to dream," he replied, equally drowsy. "But if I do, I will find you."

* * *

Quebec didn't understand how they could not _notice._ The world should have resounded with the final shattering of her tortoise's stony shell, yet nobody seemed to notice it at all. Well…Connor was absorbed in loving his own little bird, and now that Quebec had her own delicate-strong thread binding her to another, she understood, so he was excused. So were the tiger and his porcelain doll for the same reason. But Becker, Danny, and Sarah were just plain _stupid._

Once she had escaped the watchful eye of the white-coated doctors with the blue hands that still made her skin feel crawly, she made her way to Stephen's room. She lightly knocked on the door and waited.

* * *

There was a light knock on his door, and Stephen hastily straightened up, pulling a face at the sharp twinge of discomfort that moving sent coursing down his back. Oh, yeah, he'd definitely pulled a muscle there. Standing up, he dragged his feet across the room. To his surprise, it wasn't Cutter or Becker or even Danny on the other side. It was Quebec. She looked like the world's most adorable serial killer, her clothes dried stiff with blood, young face framed in soft black hair. "Hey," he said softly.

"Hey," she echoed back. He backed up from the door slightly, allowing her to step inside; she closed the door by leaning back against it, and he heard the lock click. "I know my own mind now," she said, stepping closer to him.

"Yeah?" Stephen asked softly, not backing up as she came close. He knew what she was getting at, and all his aches and pains were gradually being forgotten because there was no way he was _that_ tired.

Quebec reached out and placed one little hand on his chest, right over his heart. "His stony shell is gone now, leaves only the soft parts exposed to her," she murmured. "Little brother doesn't know yet that we are bound in threads."

He slid a finger beneath her chin, lifting her dark gaze to his. "And don't you be telling him, either. Not until I get some sleep. And reload," he added. He didn't think that Connor would actually kill him for being with Quebec, but…well, it never hurt to be prepared.

She giggled, standing up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "She will not let them hurt the tortoise."

"Not a tortoise," he mumbled, though now it was more reflex than actual protest.

"You know you are."

He sighed softly, draped an arm around her back, and pulled her into his arms. "Yeah, alright. I am."

The elder Temple laid her head on his chest, lashes fluttering closed as she listened to the steady, clean sound of his heartbeat; Stephen rested his chin atop her head, pressing his nose into her soft hair to inhale her scent. "Mm…gone all curly-purple inside," she said, a pleased little expression on her face.

"That a good thing?"

"Yes." She lifted her head, stood up on her tiptoes once more, and placed a hand on the back of his neck, drawing his head down to hers in a kiss, the kind of kiss that made his toes curl in his boots. "He has a promise to keep. The others are all otherwise occupied and cannot interrupt," she murmured against his lips when they pulled apart, a wicked gleam in her eyes.

Stephen drew her in closer to him, lips seeking hers once more, and they staggered backwards towards the bed.

Afterwards, lying in that state of warm, bittersweet exhaustion, he reminded himself that it was considered fairly rude to go to right off to sleep and propped himself up on one elbow looking down into Quebec's face. The young woman had a small smile on her lips, face set in a distant, thoughtful look that definitely wasn't what he'd had expected from her. He frowned slightly. "Uhm…Q?" he murmured softly staring down at her.

She held up one finger for silence. "I am making sure that I remember… _everything,"_ Quebec replied in her soft little voice, eyes still closed.

 _Oh. That sounds…good, I suppose,_ he thought. "So…I did alright?" he asked quietly, then winced at how insecure that sounded. "I mean, I didn't - "

Quebec silenced him with her fingertips against Stephen's lips. "You were worried about me. Tried to be gentle and not hurt me," she said quietly, as if she knew what'd been done but didn't quite understand why.

"Yeah, I was." They were both beaten to hell and back, her more so than him, and Stephen had tried to be careful of that, to not hurt her at all. He raked his gaze down her bare body, stretched out beside his; the girl's pale skin was mottled with bruises in various stages of forming, a sickly rainbow of yellowish-green, purplish-black, and angry red. "Christ, you look like a paint set got sick on you as is."

She smiled back, lightly touching his bare chest, tracing the edges of his own new bruises. "You are colourful, too," she reminded.

"I didn't make any of those, did I?" he asked.

"You did. Four. Small and close together." Quebec grasped the tracker's wrist and guided his hand down to the back of her thigh where Stephen had dug his fingertips into the flesh, too overwhelmed by the ecstasy of being together to realise just how tight his grip was.

"Sorry," he murmured quietly.

"It's okay. I dug in too," she replied, running a fingertip along Stephen's bare shoulder; there were several red marks on his back and shoulders where her short nails had dug into the flesh. "It wasn't a moment for caution."

"No, I'd think not." He ran his fingers through her soft hair and kissed her gently before lying back on the bed, feeling her settle down beside him, curled up on his chest. Stephen slipped an arm around her back, holding her close to him, and for the first time in quite a long time, he went to sleep feeling satisfied, loved, and safe. Curled up in his arms, Quebec Temple felt whole and cherished.


	25. Repaired

Connor _was_ in a good mood when he woke up this morning. _Was_ being the operative word. _Was_ meaning past tense, meaning he wasn't in a good mood at the moment. He'd woken up warm and happy, curled up with his sweet Abby-bird in his arms. They would've been content to lay in bed all day, but they were in a hospital still, and an empty stomach could not be ignored. When he'd gotten up and dressed in his clothes—they were stiff with dried blood, he would have to change when they got home—he'd stepped out of the room at precisely the right, or perhaps wrong, moment.

He'd seen Quebec leaving Stephen's room. Both of them were disheveled but smiling, full of bubbling violet-white-green-silver-pink tones that sang like crystal and honey and sunlight, the same kind of sensations that curled about inside Connor's own being. Stephen rested a hand on her back, the gesture possessive and caressing, a warm, indulgent smile Connor had never seen from him before crossing his lips. He knew instantly what they had been up to, without even using the silver cord, and his own warm, curly spectrum feelings give way to jagged spikes of crimson, black, and auburn. Neither had seen him, and he retracted into his room for a moment, breathing hard, struggling to restrain his own anger.

"Connor?" asked Abby gently, touching his back. "What's the matter?"

He gritted his teeth and shook his head. Once he was certain that he could speak to Stephen without throwing the tortoise out of the window to watch his shell crack on the pavement, he opened the door and walked out of the room. She followed at his heels, murmuring questioningly, but he said nothing in reply, not sure if he could guard his tongue well enough.

He found them in the cafeteria with the rest of the team. The Dozen had taken up different perches around the room with plates of breakfast, happily nibbling on their food. Cutter was sitting with a pale, bandaged Jenny perched in his lap, a protective arm cradling around her waist, careful of her bandaged stomach, a plate full of food set in front of them. Danny sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Sarah, having already cleaned off his own plate and working through his second cup of coffee as Sarah nibbled on eggs and toast beside him. Becker had his own plate full of assorted fruit, as well as a side of bacon, just sitting down to eat. Connor strode forwards.

* * *

Stephen set down a plate of his own at the table, full of a bit of everything from the rather expansive buffet the hospital offered—no doubt it was Lester's doing—but before he could pull out a chair to sit down, a sharp blow to his solar plexus took him right off his feet, throwing him onto his back with a crash. Stephen coughed and gasped, wheezing for breath. A furious Connor stood above him, fists clenched, but then Quebec was there, shoving hard against her brother's chest and driving him back a step, standing protectively over Stephen.

"What the hell?" said Cutter. The man gently shifted Jenny from his lap and stood up, frowning.

Coughing, Stephen waved a dismissive hand; Quebec grasped his wrist and helped him to his feet. Abby had an arm around Connor's waist, holding him back as well. "It's…alright," he wheezed, rubbing his chest. _Suppose I had that one coming,_ he thought to himself. "So…guess you've found us out," he said, looking up at Connor.

"You son of a bitch," Connor spat out.

"What the hell is going on here? Stephen, why's he hitting you?" Cutter demanded, stepping between the two men and pushing them apart.

Feeling slightly comforted by Quebec's small hand at the small of his back, Stephen glanced around the room. "Everyone's here, so we might as well get it all out in the open," he said. "Connor is pissed at me—"

"The Stephen tortoise is mine own," Quebec cut him off, stepping back to slide a protective arm around his waist, through her eyes didn't venture from Connor, narrowed at him; Stephen automatically placed a hand on her back. "You will not hurt him, little brother. I won't let you."

All gazes shifted towards Stephen. "You…and Quebec?" echoed Cutter in an incredulous tone, staring at his lab technician in disbelief. His pale gaze flicked from the arm Quebec had around Stephen's waist to the hand that the other man was resting on her back. "You and Quebec," he repeated, though now it was more statement than question. A dark flicker of anger passed through his eyes. "Stephen, I swear to God…"

"Nick," came Jenny's soft voice, making him turn back towards her, everyone's eyes flicking to her. She was still pale and shaky, but there was a calm expression on her face. "Let someone who's on enough painkillers to be objective handle this, yeah?" she suggested, glancing around the room to make it clear that she wasn't just talking to the professor alone. Looking around Cutter, she made a beckoning gesture to Quebec; the girl stepped forward, and as if attached by string, Stephen followed close behind her, remaining within arm's reach at all times. Jenny clasped both of Quebec's pale hands in her own. "Now, tell me the truth," she said firmly. "How long have you two been having these…feelings towards each other?"

"Specify parametres. Conscious or subconscious?"

"Consciously," Jenny clarified. "The both of you."

"Eighteen weeks, five days, three hours, and 12 seconds."

"And since you've been feeling this, has he ever done anything just to hurt you? Purposefully?"

"No."

"Lied to you or said he'd do something that he didn't?"

"No."

"Said or did something hurtful just to get a reaction?"

"No."

"Ever been forceful at all?"

"No. He was a gentleman. Refused to be together until I knew my own mind and was repaired."

Jenny patted the girl's hand. "Well, then, it seems you've found the best romantic prospect in the ARC that isn't either already in a relationship or related to you," she said with a tiny grin. When the others gave her a shocked look, surprised, she only gave them a look daring them to challenge her. "Just out of curiosity, though…why him?"

Quebec smiled fondly, soft expression full of warmth. "He is not afraid of me. He does not mind my broken bits or the fact that I am designed to kill. He sees that I am a weapon and does not fear it. To him, I am not broken or flawed. He ignores my shattered mind-pieces as if they are the oil or soot or dirt that sometimes marks even the best of weapons. There is something powerful in finding someone that accepts you as you are, and there are few who can do it. He thinks that I'm shiny. Are you afraid of your tiger?" she asked suddenly.

"No, of course not," Jenny replied, surprised by the question.

"Others would see him as inhuman or wrong, but you do not. You see him as a man, and one that you love. You do not fear him because you know he would not hurt you, that you are his as much as he is yours. You see him as Stephen sees me," Quebec said gently, then released the PR's hands and turned towards her brother. "And as Abby sees you, little brother."

Connor let out a long, slow sigh. He knew when he was beat, when his argument no longer held any starch or fire whatsoever, and big sister was right. Abby-bird did not see him as broken or wrong. She saw his disparate bits and pieces and accepted them. She saw him as a whole worthy of being whole at all, a made thing but crafted fine and none the worse for not having grown of himself. It was a powerful thing, being accepted as he was by someone he loved, and he could not begrudge his sibling that same kind of peace and love. Opening his eyes, he looked over at Stephen, stepping closer to the tracker; the other man eyed him warily, wondering if he was about to be hit again. "I…may not approve, but if you make her feel whole as Abby does for me…I will not protest. So long as you know that if you hurt my sister, I will quite efficiently remove your reason to be called a man," Connor added with a sharp glint in his eye, but then it softened and he extended one hand towards the other man.

Stephen gave a snort of laughter as he grasped the proffered hand. "Understood. Besides, if I ever do hurt her, I think that she'll tie me in a knot with her feet just fine on her own," he replied.

Cutter heaved a sigh, shaking his head. "Alright. I'm going back to the room, check on the other hybrids. Try not to kill each other," he said. Helping Jenny to her feet and supporting her with an arm, he left the room.

Once they had left the room, Foxtrot bounded over and hugged Quebec tightly. "I am happy for you. You make a fair match. It is good that you have one who sees you as whole. He also has very lovely blue eyes."

Stephen let out a low groan of exasperation, shaking his head as he rested one arm around Quebec's slim waist and drew her in near to him. "Oh, Lord, Foxtrot, there's a few people on this team that still take me seriously. Keep talking like that, and you're going to kill what's left of my reputation. Really, you want that?" he asked pointedly, glaring over at the small, stocky woman.

"No, no. Stephen is tough and stubborn and exceptionally ornery. We would never say otherwise in a public setting." Quebec put her head against the tracker's chest, cuddling herself against him in a way that Abby had to admit was rather…cute; she never would've believed it.

"And don't you forget it. You too," he added with a glare towards Becker, Danny, and Sarah, standing nearby and snickering quietly.

"'Course not. You're mean as a snake. Bad as can be," Sarah giggled out, fighting to keep an even voice.

Danny managed to smother his laughter, but he couldn't lose his smile. "Yeah, you're hard-heartedness incarnate."

"Not a romantic bone in your body," Becker agreed, managing a semi-straight face, though the corners of his mouth still twitched in amusement.

"Better." Stephen pressed his nose against Quebec's hair, closing his eyes, one large hand spread out on her belly, drawing her back against his chest. She smiled and leant back into him with eyes closed; she was just the right height to tuck her head beneath his chin when they stood so close. Becker, Sarah, and Danny wouldn't have ever admitted to anyone aloud, but they had to agree with Foxtrot—it was kind of cute, seeing them together.

Connor, however, shook his head. "If you would refrain from such display in front of me. I said I would not protest, but I did not say I wouldn't be disturbed," he said.

Quebec stuck out her tongue at him. "Don't care."

"Me either," Stephen added without opening his eyes or lifting his head.

Shaking his head, Connor collected a plate of breakfast and made his way out the door, mumbling under his breath, "I will eat elsewhere lest I lose my appetite watching."

Abby rolled her eyes, coming over to hug Quebec as well. "He'll come 'round, don't worry about it," she reassured, then lightly swatted Stephen's on the arm. "And you'd better treat her right, Hart, or _I'll_ kick your arse myself," she added with a teasing light in her eyes.

"Yes, ma'am."

* * *

_Three Weeks Later_

"What d'you suppose ever happened to Helen?" Cutter wondered, glancing up from the board full of formulae for the time map front of him to look at Jenny.

The PR was sitting at his desk, filling out some bit of paperwork or another. She spent more time in his office than hers now, though they didn't often speak, just sat in a comfortable silence as they both worked. She'd since recovered from the wounds inflicted by the canid hybrids, though the scars still remained on her arms and stomach, but he didn't mind them, just as she didn't mind his own scars. Working in a place like the ARC, scars were fairly commonplace. "I dunno," she replied, tucking a stray bit of hair behind her ear. "Doubt she'll be gone long, though. She never can resist screwing around with us."

He laughed quietly. "Very true." As he turned back towards the door, he said, "We sent Zane and Cherry home today. Anomaly went to the right time period. Granted, they were in the wrong country, but at least it's better than nothing."

Over the course of the three weeks since leaving the hospital, they'd sent over half of the feline hybrids, all of whom were now chipped and no longer at risk to becoming feral, back home to their proper time. Ten still remained, including Schulyer and Merinus. They spent most of their time with the Dozen, preferring the company of the crazy people over that of the soldiers. The Dozen themselves, though, wouldn't be going home. According to Connor, the process of eliminating Overlord Protocol had also hard-wired in their new personalities; they wouldn't ever be able to regain their memories of their past the way Connor had. Not that they minded, though. They actually seemed quite happy with their new arrangement, seeing as how they were now on the ARC payroll as an elite security detail. Cutter wouldn't ever admit it aloud, but he was pleased as well. He liked the Dozen and was glad they got to stay.

"Better than nothing," Jenny agreed, then shook her head with a huff. "Who the hell is Christine Johnson?"

"Who, now?"

"Christine Johnson. She's some bird from Whitehall, involved with the military. According to Lester, she's been trying to get her hands on the ARC for a while, and she's getting more aggressive about it too," she answered, turning pages of her report, a slight frown working between her brows as she stared at the pages. She had never heard of Christine Johnson before, but if this woman was trying to pull the ARC out from under their feet, she had a feeling that they wouldn't be the best of friends.

Cutter shrugged. "Might have to sic the Dozen on her, then." Connor and the others found Lester to be tolerable, and had a strange sort of respect for the man, but he was the only one. They didn't show deference to anyone else unless they well and truly thought that person deserved it. If this Johnson bird really was trying to steal the ARC from them, she might very well find herself on the bad side of twelve genetically-engineered super-assassins with an insanity streak and no fear of getting their hands dirty. The professor doubted that anyone would ever be able to usurp James Lester from his position as head of the ARC so long as the Dozen were around.

"Might have to," she agreed.

Suddenly the ADD alarm began going off, red lights flashing in warning. "Never a dull moment," Cutter murmured, striding out the office and making his way to the central hub. Stephen, Abby, Quebec, and Becker had already gathered around the ADD; Danny had taken Sarah down to the firing range for target practice. "Where are we going?" he asked.

Connor typed on the keyboards. "New Forest," he answered.

"Let's go, then."

* * *

Helen sat down on an outcrop of boulders, looking around at the glaring desert, appreciating the emptiness, untouched by mankind. The sun beat down relentlessly, baking the earth and everything in its path, and she wiped the beads of sweat off her forehead and neck with her scarf, reaching into her knapsack to take out her canteen, taking a deep pull of water. She had left her canids in the Complex of the future after she'd sent them feral, all but a select few of her favourites. She hadn't stuck around to wait, though—far too many Predators. She knew that she didn't need to, though. Twenty-odd felines and a few broken failures from Manticore couldn't stand up to an assault by all those canids.

The memory made her grin fondly. She had hoped Nick would've been able to work beside her, but she should've known better. There was no way he could ever have the stomach to do what needed to be done. Even as a hybrid, he'd resisted his own instincts, tried to convince himself he was still human instead of simply embracing the animal. But at least now she was rid of him, him and all his little sycophants from the ARC.

The ARC. Well, she'd take care of that soon enough. Get rid of Sir James High-and-Mighty Lester, tear down the ARC from the inside out. Then everything would be put right at last. Taking another drink of cool water from the canteen, she took out her anomaly detector from the battered knapsack, switching it on. The crystal display flickered brightly, then chimed softly. _Look at that. Perfect,_ she thought with a smile, seeing the new anomaly on the screen that led to the present day. Maybe she'd have the chance to see the new lackeys that Lester would've hired to replace Nick and his sycophants, put the fear of God into them.

Slinging the knapsack over her shoulder, Helen stood up and started walking, watching the display with one eye to keep herself going in the right direction, hearing the dry earth crackle under her feet, the sun pounding down on her back and shoulders. As she rounded a large outcropping of stones, she saw the anomaly flickering and glittering serenely only a short distance away. Feeling unaccountably happy for some reason, she even felt so inclined to whistle the tune of an old favourite song of hers, though she couldn't remember the words for the life of her. Humming under her breath, she stepped through the anomaly.

* * *

A light brush on Cutter's shoulder made him look over. Connor stood beside him, watching the anomaly closely. "The spider of doors makes her approach," he said quietly.

"Helen?" Cutter said in shock. "Helen's coming out—?"

"She believes we are dead. Thinks the hounds devoured us," Connor murmured, still watching the anomaly, then smiled widely. "We will lock the door as soon as she steps through so she will not escape. We will have ourselves a spider in a web of our own."

Cutter nodded. "Fine. Tell the others. Let's be waiting for her when she comes out," he announced. Smiling at Jenny, who'd heard them talk, he came over and grasped her hand in one of his own, moving to stand beside Stephen. The tracker was holding onto his favourite rifle, and Quebec stood beside him, twirling one of her knives in her fingers with keen precision, watching the anomaly happily. Danny and Sarah had come to join them as well, looking just has eager. Becker adjusted his grip on his shotgun, watching the anomaly. Abby rested one hand on Connor's back, waiting.

The anomaly rippled and warped slightly, an indication of something coming through. They all waited.

Helen Cutter strode through the anomaly with a confident swing in her walk, a rather relaxed expression on her face as she whistled a jaunty tune. But when she looked up and saw the entire ARC team standing in front of her, intact and whole and very much alive, she went rigid. The look of utter shock and disbelief on her face was hilariously comical. The smile vanished from her face, eyes widening; her mouth opened but no sound came out, and she blanched beneath her tan.

"You look like you've seen a ghost, darling," Cutter said in a saccharine-sweet voice.

Helen shook her head slowly. "N-no. No. You're dead. All of you are dead," she mumbled.

Jenny strode forward. "Good, then this won't hurt," she said, then drew her fist back and punched the other woman in the face as hard as she could. Something in Helen's nose—and in Jenny's hand—went _crunch._ Helen staggered and fell back on her arse, blood pouring out of her nose, cursing. "Son of a bitch, _ow!"_ Jenny shrieked, jumping back and shaking out her hand.

Becker strode forward, grabbing a cursing, spluttering Helen by the arm and dragging her to her feet. "Helen Cutter, you are now in the custody of the ARC," he said brightly, a wide grin on his face as he snapped handcuffs on her wrists. "And, as head of security, I do believe that you are a fugitive worthy of our new elite security detail," he added, shoving her forwards into the arms of the waiting detail.

Helen, impossible as it was, went even paler when she saw the Deadly Dozen standing there waiting for her.

* * *

"You punched her?" repeated Lester dubiously, staring at his Public Relations manager closely. It'd been hard enough to believe when they brought in Helen Cutter, handcuffed and bleeding from a badly broken nose. The woman was now a prisoner in a facility so heavily guarded that it made maximum security prisons appear a child's playground; she wouldn't be getting out of there except by the grace of God Himself, and Lester had a feeling that He had stopped listening to Helen Cutter a very long time ago. A few blood tests had also pulled up rather interesting results. Helen was no longer fully human, either. She'd done a little genetic modification to herself as well, some kind of serpent, which was rather fitting.

Jenny nodded and held up her hand as proof. She'd put a hairline crack in her middle knuckle punching the other woman, and now she had her hand strapped up and numb from having the ice on it. Of course, Cutter had thought it was quite a turn-on, seeing her break Helen's nose, and she knew that there was a good chance she'd be rewarded for it later in a locked office. "Will I have to fill out an accident report?" asked Jenny, dreading the idea. She'd broken her right hand, and she was right-handed, which would make filling out paperwork a living hell.

Lester sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers together across his stomach. "No. Matter of fact, I find that I'm rather envious of you. I wish I could've been there to witness it," he replied, with a glimmer of actual humour in his eyes. He twitched his fingers towards the door. "That'll be all, Miss Lewis."

* * *

Jenny reclined in Cutter's lap with a relieved sigh, feeling his arms curl around her waist protectively. A deep love-growl roiled in the depths of his chest, vibrating against her back as he nuzzled against her hair and neck. "I can't believe you actually hit her like that," he laughed softly, reaching out to lightly grasp her strapped hand.

"I can't believe I did either. I _broke_ my _hand,_ " she said in disbelief, but then turned her head to smile at him. "But, damn, it was _so_ worth it."

Cutter laughed as he kissed her cheek and neck. "I love you, Jenny Lewis."

She kissed him back. "I love you too, Nick Cutter."

Everything was finally put right.

**The End**


End file.
